


The children of the sun

by Ibbyliv



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Blow Jobs, Depression, F/M, Fluff, Homeless Grantaire, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Reincarnation, Sex, Slow Build, Soulmates, Street artist Grantaire, soulbonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:09:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibbyliv/pseuds/Ibbyliv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It was Aristophanes who said it first, between his hiccups. The original human nature was very different to the present. Every person had a huge head with two faces, two pairs of arms and two pairs of legs. It was Zeus' wrath that parted them in half with his thunders, only to leave those lonely, two-legged creatures to wander around for eternity, until they could find the other half that they needed to ever be at peace.</em> </p><p>His knuckles are dried and almost bleeding from the piercing cold and it makes it harder for him to do his job, not that many people care to have their portraits or caricatures drawn that time of the year. Believing you’ll get rich as one of all the antagonistic streets artist in the crowded Place du Tertre of Montmartre during the winter, is like expecting to save the world as a member of a merry little band of activist college students. </p><p>Grantaire doesn’t fall under that category of people. For one thing he’s not naïve, he’s not the activist, he’s the <em>cause,</em> he’s the <em>homeless guy</em> all the idealists want to save and let him tell you what, <em>he doesn't want to be saved.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse all my possible mistakes connected with Plato's Symposium, I have not finished it yet (and I'm Greek, it's quite a shame), but we are going to study it as well in University this year and I can't wait! The soulmates part is so beautiful! (And poor Aristophanes gets the hiccups).  
> Also inspired by the STUNNING song which you must listen to RIGHT NOW if you haven't already, The origin of love by Hedwig and the angry inch.  
> Oh yes, and for an interesting twist, I DIDN'T HAVE THE TIME TO CHECK THIS I'm so sorry, I always have somewhere to go, but I will correct it in a few hours when I get back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the song 'Pompeii' by the Bastille.

_Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a mind to praise Love in another way, unlike that of either Pausanias or Eryximachus. Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you._

_Aristophane's speech from Plato's symposium,_

_Translated by Benjamin Jowett_

Months have passed since that day at the hill of Montmartre. Or centuries. He doesn’t know. But now he can touch it. It’s so quite new a thing, such a bizarre sensation. He can touch it and despite the painful mayhem in his head, when his trembling knuckles brush against the raw dried paint on the canvas, everything becomes clearer and at the same time more unbelievable, and he doesn’t know why, he never drinks, he isn’t hallucinating, this is _happening,_ he is touching them, he’s touching them on canvas, and it’s like they’re touching, marble skin on paint stained skin, breath against breath, whiskey and coffee and cigarettes. Every fiber of his being is throbbing with his pulse and yes, yes it is like the painting is throbbing itself, it’s like his heart has been torn out of his chest and moved behind a thin layer of canvas, to meet _another_ heart, and they beat like one, but _how,_ how can such things be happening? He can’t believe it. 

He can’t.

Only he’s seeing it before his very eyes.

It’s so different from every other painting he’s seen before. It is bursing out of red flames and black smoke –or they are-, they’re on fire and it’s real, so real, he can almost smell the gunpowder while touching it, he can distantly hear the cannons, his fingers are burning. Beneath the flames, two hands that belong to two different men –or to the same?- clasp tightly like they had been parted long ago and now find each other, or like they had never been apart from the Genesis of the world. Two bodies are pressed together in a damned way and nothing seems able to get between their bare torsos, the curves of their backs and the four entangled limbs, nothing, apart maybe from sin and virtue. They are hatred and love, heaven and hell, they are red and black and white and gold, and explosion of colors, a revolution of brushes yet they seem real, so real…

They are together, are they not? They are never parted, they were born like that, two faces, light and dark, unable to exist without one another -they _should have been_.

Yet they aren’t and it hurts, they exist and they exist alone. It hurts like a million bullets on their chests but he pulls back and covers the painting again with the blood red curtain with the gold embroidery.

*

A coffee would be nice. Or a beer. Or eleven.

No really, he’s cool. He’s not picky. Anything would be nice. A beer would help with that fuckin’ headache –or make it worse, which is all the same for him- which fucks his life upside down and makes him beg to die to a non-existent God but then he remembers that he doesn’t believe, either in His existence or His non-existence so that’s why he’s still alive as fuck with a head ready to explode. A coffee, on the other hand, would considerably warm him up. His knuckles are dried and almost bleeding from the piercing cold and it makes it harder for him to do his job, not that many people care to have their portraits or caricatures drawn that time of the year. Believing you’ll get rich as one of all the antagonistic streets artist in the crowded Place du Tertre of Montmartre, is like expecting to watch the Phantom of the Opera and not shed a single tear, or to save the world as a member of a merry little band of activist college students.

He doesn’t fall under that category of people. For one thing he’s not naïve, he’s not the activist, he’s the _cause_ , he’s the _homeless_ all the idealists want to save and let him tell you what, he doesn’t want to be saved. No, he’s not like them. He’s not naïve, simply because he does not _believe_. He does not believe in his art, he does not believe in his job, all he needs is money for booze.

Even though during the winter he earns coins of bigger value on the nights when he decides to sleep at the metro than that of the notes he gets for respectably distorting Japanese tourists’ cameras and narrow eyes into caricatures.

He likes sleeping at the metro. He really does. Everywhere is cold, in the sleazy shelters even colder than in park benches sometimes. But at the metro he sometimes gets the illusion of moving on, of escaping and running away, even when he never does. Life goes on, people come and go but he stays still, wrapped in his flannel shirt and old parka, yet he feels like something changes. The people he gets to speak to are different from the others _outside_. Homeless men with berets and long, white beards, peaceful philosophers of their own riotous existence. Sometimes he feels like he’s looking for something, like his pathetic excuse of a life gains some purpose and some meaning which is merely unconnected to the alcohol in his blood or a cock in his mouth. He feels like there’s something that he’s searching, and every passing metro wagon will magically bring it to him. It never does, and when he realizes that apart from a new liver –and probably new lungs too, not to mention that a nose not-so-crooked would be rather welcome, can you hear that, green fairies of absinthe or whatever sacred out there?- he might need a new brain as well… let’s say that then it becomes harder than ever. He hits the bars with the money he has earned and drinks everything he can buy or seduce the barmen into. He needs to get fucked those nights, metaphorically and literally. It’s sick and horrible yet he needs it more like he needs to breathe, in a twisted way, so he saves the money he could spend to start actually doing something with his life for the nights when the potential fuck buddies don’t have a place he can follow them to and instead has to pay for sleazy hotel rooms. He feels utterly disgusted with himself afterwards, but it sometimes makes the shadows in his head to go away even more effectively than getting wasted. He needs it.

It hasn’t been a good day. He has done a portrait of a middle-aged lady, all smiles and plastic surgeries, one of a ten year old boy –he has to admit that he’s rather proud about that one- as well as a caricature of a forty-something dude who got offended afterwards –honestly? What’s the point in paying for a bloody caricature if you want to flatter yourself in first place?

Part of their job is to _beg_ people, to sell themselves short. There are so many artists antagonizing each other, that they have to flatter chicks on their beauty and hit the right spot of their vanity in order for their eyes to fall on them instead of all the others, especially when most of the tourists in winter months don’t even have the patience to pose for a portrait that will cost them their butts –or more. He can’t do that, not today. He doesn’t care, he can’t run after tourists and sell his art like it’s merchandise, like it’s fuckin’ tissue packets or condom boxes. He’s fuckin’ exhausted, and frozen like an ice cube. His khaki parka and his scruffy old boots do very little to keep out the chill from his body, and at least he’s thankful for Éponine’s maroon woolen beanie that covers most of unwashed curls and warms his ears.

Éponine… He does love his little Pony –even though he stopped calling her that when she first punched him in the face, almost breaking a tooth or two. He’s staying at her place on the weekend. He was the one who helped her move out from her abusive parents’ house and move on with her life, he was the one who showed her that she meant something more than a tiny black dot on a huge, chaotic universe. He had a home then, of course. He had a steady job, crappy but still a job, he had money to pay his rent. His parents had not disowned him yet. It was the days when he still believed, in himself, in his art, in the world around him. He might still be young now yet he has grown insufferably old too, old and cynical but Éponine loves him as he is. She understands. She knows. They drink together and she excuses his drinking, not only because she knows for his constant headaches and bad days, but because she sometimes has some of those too. They smoke together. They dance together. They watch porn together. Sometimes they fuck together.

Only she doesn’t know _everything_. She can’t. He can’t let her know that, remember those months when I didn’t have money to pay the rent? They kicked me out? Have you seen that backpack I’m carrying around? It literally has all my belongings inside. Do you know what you have which I don’t? An apartment. Sleazy, tiny and old, with peeling walls and tacky mosaic floors, but still an apartment, a roof over your head and a mattress to stretch yourself and snore at night, and I’m happy for you, Pony, happy and relieved and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thankfully Éponine doesn’t ask too many questions. She cares for him but she thinks everything is alright. He’s a good liar, a very talented one. His plumbing has not yet been fixed when he shows up, reeking and disgusting on her doorway, asking to shower, his heater is still broken on the coldest nights of the winter when he asks for a sofa and a blanket, and she still invites him often enough to stay for the weekend without him asking. He can’t have her know. He can’t have her worry. She already is on the verge of being broke, she waits tables and raises her ten year old brother all on her own, he can’t have her demand that he moves in with her. He savors every minute of warmth and cleanness when he sleeps there and he can’t wait for the weekend, that’s true, but he feels a pang of fear in his chest when he thinks of her finding out, Éponine is cleverer than she thinks.

He can’t think of all that right now, he just needs to sketch for himself. He smirks at the thought of someone religious seeing his sketches with those weird-ass creatures, two people making love but being stuck like that forever, like they’re an item, he doesn’t know why his fingers are so attracted to drawing these abstract figures, he doesn’t know why he pictures them between flames and gunpowder.

He’s pretty lost in his _doodling_ as he casually calls it every time that Éponine raises an eyebrow and asks what he’s drawing –something which will not give him money to find a place of his own, that’s for sure- when he raises his eyes for an instant, his blue glance gazing between the crowd…

And then he sees him.

He’s the boy from his paintings. The paintings he has given to Éponine to keep with the excuse that he’s doing his bedroom over. The paintings he always woke up and had to make without knowing why or from where they had come. The paintings that made his insides clench and unclench numerous times throughout the process. The paintings from which he couldn’t raise his head, eat or drink until he’d finish them. Those paintings he never knew what meant, with the faces he’d never seen before.

It’s an explosion of flames, glow and smoke, red lips, a golden halo of hair surrounding his marble face which seems to belong to a statue that has come to life through the Godly kiss of Venus who has pitied Pygmalion, yet the man is not Galatea; he is the very Apollo reincarnated and walking between the mortals.

His chest is throbbing violently and his head is already spinning with an insufferable nausea.

If he manages to puke right in front of a Greek God, then he’ll probably have raised a new high.

*

It’s not that he doesn’t like Montmartre. Sure, he does find it slightly pretentious, excessive tourism and advertisement has definitely distorted its once bohemian, unique color, and he does his best to avoid Rue Steinkerque with all the kitschy souvenir shop where he’s granted with a headache and the danger of being pickpocketed. He hates feeling like a tourist in his own city. Tourists do stupid things. They spend hours and hours taking pictures of a metallic tower like it’s the most important monument in the world, when they have so many other things to see and to learn in the city of Light and Revolution, the city where behind every stone and every door there is history to be written. He doesn’t blame tourists or feel superior in any way of course, it’s just that he was _born_ here. It might not make any sense but it does to him.

Though he has to admit that Feuilly and Jehan weren’t entirely wrong, the artists that they are. Montmartre does have charm, as well as a different air from the rest of Paris. From the moment he they get off the metro he feels oddly drawn by the name of the station, Abbesses, which stirs something warm and familiar inside him, despite the fact that he’d never lived anywhere near the 18th arrondisement a child, or spent much time with his parents here –if he ever spent _quality_ time with his parents at all. Jehan and Courfeyrac can’t stop chattering about the beauty of the colorful wall-painting that shows the whole Paris as they climb the stairs of approximately 36 meters ( _Musichetta, do we have my accuhaler? My asthma, I can feel it!_ ) and he doesn’t even roll his eyes at they way they jump on the steps, waving their holding hands like children, Jehan in a pair of pink earmuffs and a huge sweater that has a fluffy kitten which seems considerably terrifying, in Enjolras opinion, surrounded by flying horses in outer space and Courfeyrac in his bright bowtie and ugly sweater with gingerbread men that remained from Christmas and Enjolras is certain that it was one of Jehan’s knitting crimes.

He doesn’t roll his eyes at Marius either, who has seen a particularly interesting pigeon that marches proudly like Napoleon and has stopped for a while to stare at him, he just thanks their luck for finally having the notorious Cosette with them, the object of Pontmercy’s stalking for over a year, who now lures him away with a kiss and they finally keep walking. Of course he doesn’t roll his eyes to Joly’s newest conviction that he suffers from lupus because they love their friend and they know more than well how to help him overcome his hypochondria and rolling one’s eyes definitely doesn’t help –though _it’s never lupus_ , as Bossuet rather helpfully reminds his boyfriend. He smiles affectionately while hearing Feuilly talking to Jehan and Courfeyrac –“The grandest of artists have been inspired from this hill! Degas, Renoir, Dali, Montigliani and Monet, as well as Picasso and Van Gogh…”

He doesn’t even mind when Bahorel shows up from Feuilly’s back and wraps an arm around his waist, lifting him up as if he weighs less a kitten, shouting “WITH EVERY ARTIST YOU NAME, GINGESHIT, A BABY TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE LOSES HIS PIZZA AND DIES!” And Enjolras leaves it to Joly to explain that a mutant ninja turtle can't be teenage _and_ a baby at the same time, and to Combeferre to take care of the probability of the two friends starting to wrestle right now, which would be highly inconvenient as they are still climbing on the stairs of Rue Foyatier.

“It’s such a pity the Chat Noir is closed,” mutters Jehan sadly.

“It isn’t closed,” Combeferre points out. “It is a hotel.”

“Not a bohemian cabaret, though.”

“We should visit the Musée de Montmartre,” Feuilly says thoughtfully, and Combeferre immediately nods in agreement.

“Or the vineyard of Rue Saint-Vincent,” winks Bahorel while Joly walks closely, inspects his friend’s cheek which has just received a punch from Feuilly that like always, turned out to be more hurtful than a playful one. The ginger with the patched tweed beret has now taken out a cigarette and Combeferre raises an eyebrow disapprovingly –it might be the twelfth today- but doesn’t say a word.

“I have a better idea!” cries Courfeyrac, doing a dramatic pirouette, “LET’S VISIT THE MOULIN ROUGE!”

That earns enthusiastic murmurs from everyone and it finally causes Enjolras to roll his eyes. “It’s late in the morning, and I’m sure that even if we just pass outside, Jehan will make the connection with the movie and burst into tears.”

“I’m not ashamed and I don’t see a reason I should be…” croons Jehan cheerfully.

“Even _Bahorel_ cries at Moulin Rouge!” protests Courfeyrac.

“Of course I do!” Bahorel comically pretends to be wiping a non-existent tear.

“Is there anyone who doesn’t cry at Moulin Rouge?” Cosette raises an eyebrow.

“Me!” Enjolras and Marius say in unison. Half pairs of eyes fall on Marius with a sigh and he mutters “What!” defensively, while the rest stare at Enjolras with exasperation.

“Of course, you ruthless marble-heart,” Combeferre says, but his voice is almost tender and lacks any poison as he pats his best friend’s shoulder.

“You already know about the punishment of those who laugh at those who cry in movies!” laughs Bossuet, “Combeferre forces them into the Joly diet!”

“No, not oats again! I would never laugh at my sweet yet intrepid poet! Get your filthy hands off my nutella!” moans Courfeyrac and Joly shoots him a hurt look.

They stop for a while to admire the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and even though Enjolras was never religious, he can’t help but feel awe, a different kind of awe that Notre Dame causes him. It doesn’t take long to realize how cold it is outside, and he feels considerably thankful for his leather gloves, his dark blue peacoat and his favorite red scarf that Combeferre always remembers to take for him during the cold winter months when he forgets. They start walking again and he shoves his hands in his pockets, certain that his nose is red and Courfeyrac starting to call him Rudolph again is only a matter of time. Behind him, Combeferre is walking by Jehan’s side and Enjolras’ ears catch the medical student’s words: “…It was Eryximachus who said that love occurs in absolutely everything in the universe, even animals and plants, protects and should be protected, as it might even be capable of curing the diseased.”

Enjolras turns his head, his interest captured, only to find a serene smile on Jehan’s face. “Can one ever forget Aristophane's theory of the origin of love? The children of the sun, the earth and the moon, the people with two faces, two pairs of legs and of arms? Is there a most beautiful theory in all literature and poetry, but the story of creatures parted in two by the wrath of Zeus?”

“It is indeed a wonderful story, showing the demanding need and winding road of every human being to discover their soulmate.”

“Poor Aristophanes and his hiccups,” sighs Joly sadly.

“Plato?” asks Enjolras’, slightly frowned despite his respect for the philosopher.

“The Symposium,” nods Combeferre.

Enjolras’ expression grows thoughtful while his friends carry on with their conversation. He doesn’t really feel in the mood of pointing out his arguments concerning Aristophanes’ theory.

Oh yes, he doesn’t dislike Montmartre, not at all. And he does love his friends, who are now fervently discussing philosophy behind his back on a regular morning stroll. What he doesn’t love is the sight of the homeless mother who had to breastfeed on the metro station and the horrible feeling of tightness in his chest when he took a glimpse of her. That’s why he would rather be at home right now. He has so many things to finish, so many people are suffering, under oppression and poverty, he thinks of the articles, the protests and the speeches he could be preparing right now and he feels guilty. The cold weather doesn’t really help.

Place du Tertre has some bohemian air, that’s for sure. It is full of artists who sell their work and Feuilly’s lips curl in a wide smile behind his cigarette as he sees all the colors and the shades and the different techniques. They walk past the portrait makers that fall on their group like predators. He should have expected that. He is very well aware of his attractiveness –Courfeyrac wouldn’t let him have it any other way- even though he finds it highly insignificant and it’s not that other friends are not considerably attractive as well, Cosette with her Rapunzel hair and smooth, rosy skin, Courfeyrac with his quirky green eyes and Jehan’s serene, whimsical expression. Apparently, however, for a reason he can hardly understand, most of the portraitists are literally begging him specifically to pose and he has to admit that he feels extremely annoyed of their attentions.

“Oh Enjolras, you should have your portrait done!” beams Jehan.

“Oh yes, what excellent fapping material it will be!” cries Courfeyrac. “You’re definitely posing today!”

“Let them draw you like one of their French girls,” Bahorel curves his hips and pouts his huge lips –everything about Bahorel is defined, from his Mohawk to his eyebrows and biceps that are ready to explode underneath his long-sleeve shirt because Bahorel doesn’t need anything more than a leather jacket, no he doesn’t, and that only when it’s snowing outside.

“Yes, very funny,” mutters Enjolras, trying to get past a woman in a furry coat with no eyebrows that is blocking their way, determined to sacrifice her freedom or something like that only to draw his fuckin’ _face_ of all things.

“But Enjolras, you really should have your portrait drawn,” Cosette smiles and Musichetta agrees, causing Joly and Bossuet to immediately nod.

Artists around him shout “Oh mon _dieu_ , tu est _ravissant_!” “Absolutely stunning, comme un _rock star_!”

“Combeferre, say something!” now Enjolras sounds desperate, trying to release himself from a tiny bald man’s grip who is cradling his pencils threateningly.

To his utmost horror, Combeferre shrugs his shoulders in defense. “You have to admit that you are inhumanly attractive, to the point of driving the world of art to delirium.”

“You give us recurring orgasms, Enj,” Feuilly winks seriously and nobody can hold their laughter.

“That’s it, you’re getting your portrait done!” shouts Courfeyrac, blocking his way.

“You’re all insufferable!” huffs Enjolras, trying to walking past his best friend.

“No need to make a fuss,” Courfeyrac pats his head as if he’s a puppy. “You’ll eventually succumb either to out innocent pleas or to our designing flattery.”

Just then, they hear a voice that immediately makes Enjolras to turns his head. It is hoarse and lazy and it immediately succeeds on getting on his already sensitive nerves. “Would Apollo be interested in having his portrait drawn? Or maybe a caricature?”

They all turn to face a sitting man with wild, dark curls peeking underneath a maroon beanie. His eyes are pale blue and piercing in a way, he seems to be talking to everyone but his glance is fixed on Enjolras who feels entirely too confused, and shudders because of the cold. “How did you…” he starts to ask with an incredulous expression, but Courfeyrac interrupts him.

“ _Of course_ he’s interested!” He smiles genuinely at the artist. “I dare _you_ to turn his pretty little face into a caricature!”

“Absolutely no way,” says Enjolras sharply, wrapping his fingers around Courfeyrac’s collar and dragging him back. “I’m sorry,” he addresses the artist, searching for an excuse, “my friends are waiting.”

“No rush, baby,” Musichetta inspects her nails with a smile, "I have absolutely _nothing_ forgotten on the stove. Do you, Bossuet darling?"

"Not as far as I can recall, dear!"

“I... I don’t even have enough money!” Of course he does.

“It’s a treat on me!” shouts Courfeyrac. “You’re getting your caricature done or we’re never leaving!”

“By dose is already rudding!” protests Joly.

Enjolras desperately turns to Combeferre, his expression begging for help, but his best friend has _You’re on your own_ written all over his face and he gives him a small, soft smile, which only Enjolras has learnt to read as downright evil. “I agree, Enjolras, right now I prefer a caricature to an actual portrait.”

The artists snorts in a way which seems painfully familiar to Enjolras and starts sharpening his pencils. “It will be quite a challenge to distort such a flawless, statuesque face, but I accept your challenge. Though you seem rather restless, Apollo. Overcaffeinated, should I assume? You need to sit still for me.”

Damn, that voice annoys him like nothing else, as for the sarcastic expression in the artist’s blue eyes it makes Enjolras’ insides jump without a warning, probably driven by anger. Bahorel shoves him on a chair and the artist places a new piece of paper on his easel. “Anything in particular you’d like me to include? Any hobbies? Any…” he smirks teasingly, “ _peculiarities_?”

Courfeyrac throws himself up and whispers something in the artist’s ear. Enjolras is feeling absolutely furious, especially not being able to hear what is said about him. The artist chuckles lightly and starts working, biting his lower, dry lip occasionally and frowning in concentration. He is an interesting sight, with his huge blue eyes and his unshaven, raw face, Enjolras must admit that, but he will never forgive his friends, not even Combeferre.

Especially Combeferre, the bespectacled Brutus-Judas-Wormtail little shit of a traitor!

No, never Wormtail. Enjolras already feels guilty for thinking it. But Courfeyrac, Courfeyrac will have to run the whole Tour de France in order to get away from his wrath.

“You need to sit still in order for your _friend’s money_ to not go wasted,” mutters the artist in a low voice, his eyes shifting from him to the easel.

“Well excuse me but the temperature is near zero, I can’t help _shivering_!”

The artist just chuckles as if he knows _much better_ what it's like for the temperature to be near zero, and soon bites his frozen pale lip for one last time, drawing a little blood, and the caricature is finished.

“See you around, Apollo,” he smirks while Courfeyrac pays him and everyone else thanks him. “Don’t let him see it before he gets home,” he mutters to Combeferre who nods solemnly, and shoots Enjolras a last blue glance before the blonde decisively faces away and starts walking, his hands shoved deep into his pockets while his friends laugh behind him at what he can't see.

When he gets home, his heart is already pounding with anticipation even though he’ll never admit it. Before even taking his scarf off, he pulls off one glove, and with a sweaty hand he unwraps the piece of paper.

It’s him, it _looks_ painfully like him, all his excellent features enlarged, huge, curvy lips, eyelashes that weigh more than the rest of his body and ridiculously formed curls. He’s dressed in nothing but an ancient chiton and he’s wearing a crown made of daphne leaves like a halo on his hair, which is radiating brightness all around the paper. A bubble is coming out of his mouth, saying _Sometimes I hate people but I still want to save them_ , and his expression is that of pure teenage angst. On the right bottom corner of the paper there is a calligraphic  _R_ and the image of the blue-eyed man and his crooked, sarcastic smile comes back to mess with Enjolras' thoughts.

Courfeyrac is going to die. Scratch that. Courfeyrac is going to be _murdered._  

With fire.


	2. Icarus is flying too close to the sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not that Greek shit again, okay? We don’t all have such a fuckin’ educated side that comes on the surface when we’re wasted! I think I understand your poetic delirium. When was the last time you got laid?”
> 
> Grantaire sighs bitterly and turns to face her, wrapping his arms around her thin waist and pulling her closer. She’s warm and feels safe as she throws her fingers through his hair, tousling it. “Have you ever felt like you’ve known someone… forever?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally I decided to sit down and continue this story as your feedback has been amazing and I'm so glad you liked the first part! Unfortunately this is some sort of a filler for the plot before I can continue to the following chapters. This is going to be slow build but I promise much E/R centric fluff, angst and hurt/comfort as they'll try to realize what is happening to them and what bond they really are sharing.  
> Chapter title is from the song 'Icarus' by Bastille.  
> I'm going to beg you again to listen to the wonderful song 'The origin of love' by Hedwig and the Angry Inch which has inspired the whole story, if you haven't already!  
> I really appreciate the feedback. Thank you very much for reading!

Metro tickets in Paris are expensive as fuck.

Everything in Paris is expensive as fuck. The only problem with that is that people are hardly willing to pay something between thirty and fifty euros which is the tariff for a portrait at Montmartre.

No really, tickets in the Paris metro are expensive as fuck. Each of them costs one euro and seventy cents. Which equals the ‘payment’ of a clochard who sleeps in the station, coming from three people in total. So on the bad days, when nobody really cares to have his nose drawn like a pumpkin and the forest of Amazon as his eyebrows on his caricature, Grantaire doesn’t eat. His money is already spent on beer and tickets. Because, believe it or not, tickets are more important than a sandwich. Grantaire loves the metro.

With Éponine they always watch movies. _Fight Club_ is their favorite and they love underground French and Canadian cinema. Whenever Gavroche is at home, the three of them have Harry Potter marathons and Grantaire absolutely loves it. However, when he spends his day at the street, it’s practically impossible to watch a movie. Apart from when he finds a Wi-Fi hotspot. Because like every accomplished hipster, Grantaire dresses like a homeless and owns a ridiculously expensive phone.

Well, almost, apart from a tiny insignificant detail. Grantaire _is_ homeless.

He can’t deny himself his phone. He bought it before he started having problems with the rent and it’s one of the few luxuries he seeks for even though other than that he is technologically illiterate. He always had a tendency to appreciate good things. He still knows the best restaurants, bars and clubs, and whenever he sells a few portraits he gets pissed drunk with Éponine and they dance until the morning to monotonous beats, having sex on legs, with fingers wandering below waistbands and palms resting on swaying hips, breathing the smoke of the room greedily through parted lips and bathing in their own sweat.

But no, in general Grantaire can’t see movies on the streets and taking the metro without knowing your actual destination is like watching a movie.

Where else could he see that old man with the hair coming out of his ears picking his nose? Where else could he see those adorable blond twins that make funny faces behind their mother’s back? Where else apart from the Paris metro could he see people of all the different ages and colors, with all the different expressions and clothes, begging to be captured on paper even though the actual people don’t know it yet or might even seem annoyed when they notice him?

But he sketches them anyway. He’s wearing his beanie, his only way to protect his hair from the rain outside and has his parka wrapped tightly around him, his boots tapping rhythmically on the floor as he rests his sketchbook on his lap and sketches.

Today he’s still scanning the crowded wagon with his blue eyes to find whom he will sketch. He immediately settles on a man sitting right opposite him. What immediately draws his attention is that the man is holding a notebook with the same eagerness he’s cradling on his own sketchbook, only the man’s look as he scribbles in it is that of pure tenderness, when he knows that his own is merely that of desperation and obsession, because if he loses his art then he’ll have nothing left.

He gives the man a better look and he finds himself gaping in surprise when he realizes. He really is a pleasure even for the most troubled of eyes. Ginger hair braided on his shoulder, a pair of tortoise shell glasses resting low on the tip of his nose and behind them, the most peaceful and serene warm glance. Freckles are scattered all over his pale face and his thin body is swimming inside a huge sweater in the color of honey with dusty roses and hideous brocade patters. He’s wearing the tightest pair of yellow trousers Grantaire has ever seen and a pair of old, ditsy floral army boots. His wrists are bony and can hardly be seen through the long sleeves as he writes furiously, occasionally biting his lower lip in an adorable manner.

And then the metro stops and he hears the characteristic sound of opening doors as they’ve heard the announcement that they’re on the Concorde station which is his stop, so he gets up and grins in surprise with the coincidence that the flower man stands up too and their eyes meet as they get off the wagon. The man walks to him with a wide smile. “The artist!” he exclaims friendly.

“The boyfriend!” chuckles Grantaire.

The man raises an eyebrow. “Is that the best you can do?” he asks without poison in his voice. “I hoped that the first impression I give to people is something more than just _the boyfriend._ ”

Grantaire shrugs his shoulders apologetically. “I only saw you while I was drawing the portrait and the only thing I could see was you and the charmer hanging off of each other like lovebirds! Now I’ve seen you write as well, so may I call you the writer, or something?”

A shy smile and a faint flush appear on the man’s face. “I like that more.”

“What were you writing, then?”

The man blushes more violently but eventually answers. “Poetry. Trying to, at least.”

“The poet, then?”

“Hardly, but thank you,” laughs the man and it’s a beautiful, clear sound that demands the whole world to be happy despite everyone’s problems. He offers him his free hand, the one that’s not wrapped around the notebook, and Grantaire notices a rose tattoo with its leaves and thorns spreading on the back of his hand and hugging his wrist. “I’m Prouvaire, friends call me Jehan. I just decided I want you to be a friend, so call me Jehan.”

Grantaire feels a pleasantly unexpected warmth passing through his body, despite the chill they can both feel as they stand in the middle of the platform. “I’m Grantaire.”

Jehan laughs again. “So the capital R on the caricature, which by the way was hilarious in a beautiful way… Good, very good, our Joly loves puns,” he notices the confusion on Grantaire’s face, mixed with his appreciation, as nobody ever really catches the pun. “Joly was the one with the cold. Courfeyrac was The Boyfriend Man, the one I was hanging off of as if my life was depending on it or something.”

Grantaire nods, starting to remember the merry little band of friends. “You two looked sickeningly cute together!” Jehan’s face lit up with a smile. “He seemed cool. I mean, I wouldn’t want _him_ to be my boyfriend, seemed like quite the asshole, but I quite grew on him when I realized how hard he makes Apollo’s life.”

“Oh, Courf loves teasing everyone and he most definitely has a talent for pissing Enjolras off. But other than that they really love each other, they’ve been best friends, together with Combeferre –the one with the thick glasses- since kindergarten. By the way, Apollo is an excellent name for Enjolras, it suits him perfectly though something tells me that he won’t be entirely too happy if you ever call him like that again!”

 _Enjolras._ He wants to repeat this name and roll it again and again on his tongue until he can taste it. This name looks like the sun and sounds like red. He wants to taste it until it burns his tongue and melt inside him entirely. He thinks of him. He hasn’t stopped thinking of him throughout the whole week. Courfeyrac and the other, Combeferre have known him since kindergarten. He feels an inexplicable pang of jealousy. He wants to know him too. He wants Enjolras to love him unconditionally like he loves Courfeyrac even when he irritates him. Maybe he and the dude with the glasses, Combeferre are a couple. They seemed like an old married one, at least. He knows his chuckle comes out a little biased. “It’s not like I’ll see him ever again…”

“No, we’d all like to meet you better! We loved the caricature and you seem like a smart guy, maybe you’d be interested in joining us to our meetings!”

“Meetings? As in pagan meetings? Or of romantic anonymous? No forget I said that, there was that huge scary dude, he couldn’t be a romantic anonymous. And you can’t be alcoholic anonymous because trust me, I can smell the _absence_ of alcohol in one’s breath and Apollo is definitely one of those who have not tasted alcohol in their lives!”

Jehan has been hearing his rambling with sheer amusement this whole time. “We’re an activist group. I believe you’d be interested to join us once, I’m sure you’d have excellent ideas to contribute with!”

Grantaire gives him a small smile and shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s exactly my thing, Jehan. I mean, you look really cool and all, but I’m not sure the others will like my presence there. I don’t really believe in activism.”

Jehan shakes his head. “Nonsense. The others will really like you, especially Bahorel, Joly and Bossuet! None of them has stopped speaking about the caricature, especially Courfeyrac! Plus you don’t know if you agree or not with our opinions if you don’t come and hear us talking. Or should I say _him._ Enjolras is an excellent, passionate speaker. You must not miss the opportunity to hear him. He has changed people’s view towards life, and he’s only twenty one!”

“I still don’t think that’s a good idea. I find it impossible that a group of students will ever manage to change the world.”

Jehan’s glance is enigmatic as he turns to walk to the stairs that lead to line 1 –Grantaire has to take line 8 to go to Éponine’s. “Sometimes changing the order of words on a paper, the way five year olds view homosexuality, or the old water in a cat’s bowl can be a great beginning.” He winks and says “search us at the café Musain, ask for Musichetta and she’ll be glad to help you,” before disappearing in the crowd, his loose braid bumping between his shoulder blades.

All he can think of is the blurry, dark nightmares he’s been having, the pain in his ribs every time he wakes up, Enjolras’ name that’s radiating warmth and the possibility of seeing him again. Then he takes the other metro line and sketches fires, burning eyes and two-headed monsters until he arrives at Éponine’s neighborhood.

*

Metro tickets in Paris are expensive, you know.

Expensive as fuck.

They must do something about it. They must hold a petition, organize a protest. He must really discuss the matter with Combeferre. It is absurd to be denying people equal rights towards a given good such as public transportation.

But he likes the metro. He likes reading his book accompanied by the monotonous sound of the railway, he likes walking between the crowds when he changes the line, studying their faces, their expressions, wondering about their feelings, opinions and life. Enjolras cares about the people. Enjolras dreams of seeing all those faces contented, unfrowned and free one day. It may be utopian. It may be naïve. But Enjolras is ready to fight for their rights and lead them to a better world.

And then he sees him. This must be a cruel, distasteful joke played on him because he has spent the past week being laughed at by his friends due to that ridiculous caricature and trying to stop thinking about him and his sarcastic smiles, but always failing miserably. The worst thing is that he doesn’t know why the hell the man keeps visiting his mind so rudely and irritatingly in first place. If Enjolras believed in fate he’d find this a cruel trick, because the man, _R_ is here, same blue eyes staring at him and a sarcastic smile which doesn’t quite reach them, and his fingers reach for his earphones and he pulls them off his ears and Enjolras instinctively wraps his red coat tightly around him as a shudder has penetrated his spine because fuck _,_ the man is elbowing his way towards him and _fuck,_ he isn’t wearing his beanie today.

Which means that Enjolras can see his hair. It isn’t only dark, curly and wild as if he’s just stopped dancing, no. He also has a _ponytail._

A dark, curly ponytail that hangs on his one shoulder. His hair is fuckin’ long.

And before he can pretend to be reading his book, or to be staring outside the wagon or something equally pathetic, the man is speaking to him and his voice is hoarse, probably from the smoking and his eyes twinkling with humor.

“Look who’s here! Apollo almighty himself, taking public transportation among us humans! Are you enjoying your portrait? I hope it has earned a rather prominent place above your bed!”

Enjolras is gritting his teeth in irritation without even realizing it. “If you’re talking about my _caricature_ then yes, stay assured that it’s prevailing upon the walls of my bedroom! And the name is Enjolras!”

R waves his hand dismissively in the air. “Right, I’m sorry. It was very hard to draw a caricature, I mean you _did_ look as if you’d had a stick shoved up your ridiculously skinny ass but you have all that Greek God slash underwear model going on for you… God, are you _blushing_? That’s adorable!” Enjolras’ palm immediately reaches to touch his burning cheeks and he feels his blood pounding angrily in his head. “Which word did it? Ass or underwear?”

“You’re quite insufferable, do you know that?” he mutters, wondering if he should get off at _Bonne Nouvelle_ instead of _Grands Boulevards_ in order to get rid of the annoying street artist a stop sooner.

The man winks and his eyes are so blue they can pale the sky, or so Jehan would write. “So they say kid, so they say!”

“ _Kid_?” asks Enjolras incredulously.

“I mean, the reason you look like you haven’t tasted alcohol in your life is probably pretty practical. You’re obviously illegal!”

“Doesn’t it cross your mind that I might be a twenty-one year old who doesn’t feel the urge to destroy his liver just yet? That I do not find it really charming to tatter around and slur pathetically? That I may need to keep the ability to _think_ in order to be able to occupy myself with activism?”

The artist raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re not seventeen?” he doesn’t seem convinced. “Anyway, I was kind of looking forward to you mentioning your activism. You clearly have been dying to! Jehan told me about your merry little band of revolutionaries…”

Enjolras has realized something is really odd about this before Grantaire finishes his sentence. “Jehan?”

“Your little poet friend, I met him the other day at the metro. What a remarkable place this is! One day I might get to meet Audrey Tautou, do you think I should start hoping, Apollo? She’s the woman of my life!”

The surprise that filled Enjolras when he realized that Jehan hadn’t told him anything is quickly replaced by a mixture of disgust and frustration. The drunk-as-fuck man finds amusement in mocking him and Enjolras absolutely hates it. “Right. Good to know. Anyway, it was fascinating to meet you again but this is my stop and I’m not willing to miss it. I won’t say see you soon because, um, I won’t.” He’s going to change metro lines. Or start walking home from University.

And then the wagon stops suddenly and the doors open, and Grantaire loses his balance, tripping on his feet and falling on Enjolras, instinctively grabbing his chest to stand up. They stay like that for a few seconds that never seem willing to pass, hands clutching on each other. The man reeks of whiskey and wide blue eyes are staring at him with quiet, stunned shock. His pale lips are half-open, he’s breathing heavily through them and Enjolras can see his crooked teeth. A few stray dark locks have escaped his ponytail and he murmurs a silent apology. The blonde takes his hands off the man as if hit by electricity and jumps off the wagon, walking away on the platform with his feet on fire, his erratic marching leading his heartbeat.

*

“Who are you sketching?” he feels her warm breath brushing on his cheek as she bends over his shoulder, her dark hair curtaining his view. She smells faintly of cigarettes and coffee and hints of some heavy shampoo and it’s pleasantly familiar, he loves it because when he smells her he knows that they’re together and he has a home, a sofa to crash on and a bathroom to get the filth off himself. “Because he’s _hot_.”

“Back off my Apollo,” he murmurs, biting his lower lip as he struggles with the lining of the perfect ringlets of his hair.

“Do you have a hard-on for the imaginary dude you’ve been drawing?” he isn’t looking at her but he can literally hear her raising her eyebrows. She’s probably concerned that he’s mixed more drinks than he should once again.

“Not imaginary,” he hums, frowning slightly at the man’s glance because he can never get it completely right, no pencils can ever capture the warmth and conviction in it quite properly.

“Are you trying to say to me that he _exists_?” her voice is a deep, hoarse shriek –one reason for which he loves her even more is that she does not do high-pitched.  

He inhales dreamily and tilts his head back, letting it fall on her shoulder as he faces her, his blue eyes glowing fervently and his long, dark curls, released from the elastic band, spread all over her brown sweater. “He’s the sun himself, ‘Ponine, he’s the glorious, bright Apollo, dangerous and burning and I’m a young, pessimistic Icarus who doesn’t give a fuck if his wings are made from wax, I just need to fly closer to him and touch some of his light…”

She stands up and opens her mouth in a scary, off tune “Woah!” which reminds him of Audrey Hepburn in _My Fair Lady._ “Not that Greek shit again, okay? We don’t all have such a fuckin’ educated side that comes on the surface when we’re wasted! I think I understand your poetic delirium. When was the last time you got laid?”

Grantaire sighs bitterly and turns to face her, wrapping his arms around her thin waist and pulling her closer. She’s warm and feels safe as she throws her fingers through his hair, tousling it. “Have you ever felt like you’ve known someone… forever?”

She scrunches up her nose. “Like my mother, you mean?”

“No, I mean… forever! Before you were born! Like your sole purpose on this world is to find them and be with them, elsewhere you can’t think and breathing is agony…”

“ _Riiight_ … You’re baked as a cake. No more booze for R today, I’m afraid,” she scolds him motherly, as if he’s caught her little brother eating too much chocolate. “We can order some pizza, if you’d like. Shit,” her fingers slide underneath the hemline of his shirt and palpate on his visible ribs, “you’ve gotten skinnier, I should come to your place and cook you scramble eggs or something equally fancy more often.”

He almost chokes at that, and quickly reaches for a cigarette in his pocket, offering her one. Thankfully Gavroche bursts into the apartment from school and attacks them with a Nerf gun, so Éponine forgets everything about visiting him at his non-existent place.

*

It starts as a cold tingling sensation in his stomach, as if his guts have been emptied, and it comes to settle as a mild pang in his chest. It feels like something is missing, like it had always been missing but he’d never noticed in the past, and somehow he knows that he must Google the café Musain, the one that Jehan talked to him about. The woman who picks it up introduces herself as Musichetta and not only does he remember the name from his conversation with the poet, but he also finds the voice familiar. Only after he’s hung up, having acquired information about the upcoming meeting this evening, he realizes that she must have been one of the two girls in the group at Montmartre, that day with the caricature.

Éponine agrees to follow him only because Montparnasse can’t meet her tonight. His insides clench tightly and he can’t explain any of these, he has never felt that way before and he honestly doesn’t know how to explain this, all he knows is where he must go, and when.

They immediately recognize him when he enters the café, they even look pleased at his presence. Everyone, apart from Enjolras. They joke a little about the portrait, and Jehan, today wearing the baggiest piece of ‘90s denim overalls Grantaire has ever seen, introduces him and Éponine to the others.

The room is full of noise coming from their chattering and the clinking of their glasses. There’s Combeferre and Courfeyrac, Enjolras’ best friends, the ‘Head’ and the ‘Heart’ of the organization. Jehan sits on Courfeyrac’s lap and the latter nuzzles his nose on the poet’s shoulder and they whisper sweet, dirty nothings until Enjolras shoots them a deadly look and Bahorel starts making questionable teasing sounds. Joly is the one who informs Grantaire that these two have a free relationship, Courfeyrac is the sassy flirt while Jehan has very whimsical views concerning love. He is the medical student who can’t stop sneezing and Bossuet is the bald Law student who drops all of his beer on Musichetta, the waitress who happens to be involved with both of them. Feuilly, a ginger guy in a cap who’s smoking unstoppably, nods politely and Grantaire later learns with roused interest that he’s an artist too, as for Bahorel who boxes like Grantaire used to, years before, he gives him a friendly pat in the back that almost bends him down. Next to Courfeyrac is seated Marius and Grantaire feels Éponine sinking in her seat near him when he starts talking about his girlfriend, Cosette who isn’t there, and soon they realize it’s going to be all he’ll be talking about. Enjolras looks impatient and he sharply asks whether they can get on with the meeting. “I don’t know about the Grecian kind,” whispers Éponine next to him, nudging his knee with her own, “but your Apollo definitely is some sex God!”

He’s wearing a red hoodie that contrasts beautifully with his white skin and bright, fair hair, bringing the curve of his throat out as he speaks, flushed and passionate, and he remembers what Jehan had told him about hearing one of his speeches. Even in here, between friends in a dimly lit café with terracotta tables, there is an imposing glory about the way he frowns slightly while discussing their plans concerning the LGBTQA community with Combeferre and Feuilly. They mention the origin of love, sexes and sexuality in Plato’s Symposium and the effect it can have in education if studied wisely, Grantaire can immediately recognize the fragment they are talking about. It’s Combeferre who’s speaking right now, and Enjolras sits silent, looking slightly more youthful than before, with his defined cheekbones and red lips, almost feminine features and figure. Grantaire can’t really concentrate but he catches a few words spoken in Combeferre’s warm voice, and even though he’s read it himself, the descriptions of the children of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, of Zeus ripping them in half and Apollo healing the wounds, echo in his ears like an eerie lullaby, like a whole-hearted lament for something he has lost before even finding it, and he stares, that’s all he does. He watches Enjolras swallowing and his Adam’s apple bobbing slightly, he watches his chest rising and falling from behind the table, he watches his dark eyes as they shift from Courfeyrac to Bossuet and hears their suggestions and Grantaire doesn’t care anymore, because everything inside him hurts but he doesn’t regret it, he’s a disbelieving Icarus who needs to touch the light in order to be convinced, only deep inside he knows that he’ll never actually be and he yearns to be burnt by his sinful touch. He needs to stay here, he needs to worship him with all his heart because suddenly it beats with a purpose, he believes in him and he feels like something more than the massive wreck that he is, his chest is not hurting anymore, his body is only filled with a welcomed warmth which he sucks even from the most disdainful of looks that Enjolras shoots him when he laughs sarcastically and calls him Apollo in front of his friends. Grantaire lives for it, he breathes for his next glance of disappointment, for his next exclamation that he doesn’t really see a reason for him to be there if all he’s going to do is drink and mock their cause. Suddenly it feels familiar, like a habit two old friends used to share, or like a ritual between deadly enemies before the final battle. It’s like he’s been – _they’ve_ been- through this before and he can’t break the natural order of things, it’s almost harmonic in the most absurd of ways.

He knows that Éponine is snorting back a cackle and proclaims Aristophanes’ theory ‘bullshit’ from personal experience, and he enjoys the others’ puzzled, almost scared looks because his best friend can indeed become terrifying. Combeferre tries to reason with her and calmly explain the way they’re going to use the knowledge for their cause, but she just chuckles and waves her hand dismissively with an air Grantaire had always admired, leaving the bespectacled man frozen and, Grantaire notices with faint amusement, mildly intrigued. After that, the tension in the room is palpable and Grantaire loses focus of Combeferre and Éponine’s arguments. At some point Bossuet turns to him. "Do you think you could draw something for us? Like ironic sketches for fliers and so?"

Grantaire feels his cheeks burning. "I don't really think this is a good idea..."

Enjolras thankfully seems to agree with that statement, as he looks positively annoyed, but apparently he is the only one. Everyone else, even Combeferre is interested and Jehan hands him his sketchbook with an encouraging glance. Feuilly says that he is better in classic art and pleads him to give it a try because he finds it an excellent idea. Grantaire is feeling dizzy and he quickly does a small doodle based on the  _Would you rather I marry your daughter?_ , while everyone watches with stirred interest. Finally Marius exclaims "this is really good!" and Courfeyrac cries "that hot dude looks like me!" Combeferre is nodding approvingly at the symbolism and finally raises his eyes. "What would you think about helping us? These sketches are easy to swallow and would make a change in the way people view LGBTQA members."

His heart is pounding miserably in his chest at the masochistic pleasure he gets from Enjolras’ frustrated look and the flash of annoyance on his features. He’s being wholly faced with everything he needs but will never have, as if something he once owned has been violently ripped off of inside his body and can never be returned. His head is spinning and Éponine near him is squeezing his hand because they both know that in here, between all those bright minds and burning hearts he’s digging his own, pitiable grave. The detestable aftertaste of the alcohol is lingering underneath his tongue and he feels nauseous, he’s a fuckin’ mess and he knows that but he needs to protect the flames that embrace him with all that it takes. Grantaire lets the question linger in the ear, muttering that he needs  to think about it. He doesn't know why he's doing this. He never believed in activism of that sort, students going around handing fliers and shouting slogans, thinking this will magically stop assholes from calling him a fag. But he says  _he'll think about it._

Enjolras stands up from his sit and huffs impatiently, leaning forward and resting his hands on his chair. He raises his head and their eyes meet. Grantaire smiles crookedly as the blonde’s cheeks are faintly colored and his lips pressed to a thin line. Hardly anyone is paying attention to them, so between the noise, the laughter and the brainstorming around him, Grantaire winks and raises his glass to Enjolras’ direction and mouths “Here’s looking at you, kid!”

He’s quoting Casablanca and he’s not even sorry.


	3. I believe in nothing but the truth of who we are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Thank you for staying, Enj,” whispers Grantaire drunkenly, “you’re so good... you smell so good.”
> 
> Enjolras thinks that if he was religious he’d expect to be canonized. “Right. Now sleep.”
> 
> He can literally hear the serene smile in Grantaire’s voice and he can smell the whiskey mixed with God knows what else in his breath, without even turning to look at him. “Sometimes…” for an instant it sounds like Grantaire has fallen asleep, but then he continues his sentence. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve known you forever...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if this Grantaire seems totally ridiculous to you, but he is extremely drunk, like really REALLY drunk. Poor Enjolras is such a confused baby.  
> I wouldn't use a nickname such as Enj if it didn't sound like Ange, which means angel in French.  
> Sorry for all the sappiness.  
> The title of the chapter is from the song '100 suns' of 30 seconds to Mars, which seems to have been written about Grantaire.

It becomes a thing.

He wakes up breathless, his brow and neck shining with a thin layer of sweat, his t-shirt stuck on the skin of his torso and his long, dark curls plastered against his clammy forehead. It only happens when he’s sleeping on a bed or a couch –Éponine’s- and he’s terribly thankful that he doesn’t find himself trembling in the aftermath of horrible battles taking place in a distant part of his mind when he’s sleeping in metro platforms or shelters. His head is throbbing dully and his muscles feel numb as he tries to sit up and it feels like a hole has been ripped right in the middle of his chest, tearing a part of him out of his body. He feels empty and he feels cold, his sweat is cold, his blood seems to be following the example.

He used to have nightmares in the past, but hell they never left him with a physical ache he could not deal with, at least when sober. Now Éponine sees him and she knows something is wrong, something more than just Grantaire being his usual pissy self because  _morning._

She’s there when he wakes up, looking baffled and alarmed, with a mug of steamy coffee wrapped between her fingers. He reaches for it with one stretched arm, as if it is medicine or absinthe or hemlock or whatever the hell will make the feeling in his chest go away. She pulls back at first, raising an eyebrow, but then succumbs and hands him the mug, looking like she wants to touch his clammy forehead, check if he’s feverish, but somehow afraid to do it. “What the fuck did you smoke last night? For fuck’s sake, we agreed to only have Thai!” she mutters.

He shakes his head and he realizes that it pounds murderously with every movement, sending numbing vibrations to every part of his body. “Nothing, ‘m fine. Jus’ a nightmare.”

“Must have been a pretty nasty one. Lennon’s murder again?” she asks sympathetically, this time reaching to pat his arm as he takes a sip of his coffee, grimacing at the hotness that burns his tongue and he knows he’ll feel it for days. “Or was it the giant telettuby that turned your dick into a pear and started chewing on it?”

“Those were the days!” He winces at the reminiscence of that particular nightmare –he’d pick the telettuby over  _this_  anytime now- and shrugs his shoulders. “Just my mother, again,” he lies.

Éponine doesn’t even nod. She looks at him and he knows she knows. She knows how it is to have a horrible childhood, only for completely different reasons. Sometimes they can’t decide which is worse. To hate your parents and have them hate you back, or to adore your mother and lose her forever one day because she hates herself.

“So,” she says casually, pulling her ankles near her thighs and crossing her legs. She stretches her body to reach for the packet of cigarettes in the pocket of her jeans and offers him one. He takes it thankfully and takes a good drag after she lights it. “Everything okay with your apartment? Paint still smells on the wall?”

He clears his throat, feeling the rate of his pulse picking up. “Uh, sure. Listen Pony, if I’m a burden I can leave…”

She slaps his face with a dish towel. “Shut up, you idiot. Of course you’re staying. I’m just…” Grantaire holds his breath as she grimaces in confusion. “Dunno, I worry if everything’s okay. I could help somehow, you know. I might have to deal with filthy old perverts and their wandering hands in the bar, but it still gives me more money than your portraits do.”

“Thanks,” he croaks, abandoning his coffee on the table. It is still hot and suddenly he feels like it’s not helping, even though his blood is still cold. “I appreciate it.”

“Speaking of portraits,” she smiles mischievously, “what has your lazy ass been up to lately?”

He just raises his shoulders. He always used to tell her everything, now he feels like he can share nothing, not even with her, and that makes life much more difficult. “Stuff,” he murmurs and her glance is piercing behind the thin, silver smoke of her cigarette. She stands up and goes to the bathroom for a shower, leaving him alone with his sketchbook.

He pulls his long hair to a messy bun and rubs his red-rimmed eyes before grabbing a pencil. As usual, his hand starts moving on its own, like an invisible superpower is intervening between his brain and the muscles of his fingers, making it more natural than breathing. It’s a different drawing today, only it somehow is the same. A complex of fingers, long and delicate and almost feminine, tangled within raw, callused ones, with bitten fingernails and hairy knuckles, yet it feels as they belong to the same person. Hands expand to arms and something is going wrong because he isn’t really counting. One, two, three, there’s four of them, entwined in a bizarre way like in Matisse’s ‘Dance’, only there is no end or beginning indicated beneath the lines. And then there are bodies, two torsos or one, and legs, muscular like those of a Grecian statue.

There are no heads today, simply because Grantaire’s head is aching so much. There is no hair, because he already knows that if he draws hair it will be black and gold, so much gold, and Grantaire can’t afford being blinded by light. Not today.

Ever since it became worse he’s started drinking even more. A headache became a bottle of beer. A pang in his chest became a shot of tequila, then another. A nightmare became two glasses of vodka, or three. He has always been drinking but now he can’t control it. Or he can. He can and he chooses it, because life might have been a distasteful joke until now, but death –or sleep, the most sinister, impermanent side of death he has tasted- has become a painfully serious affair. He needs to drift into oblivion while he’s still alive and alcohol brings him closer to an illusion of success.

Éponine leaves for the bar she waits tables to at rue de Belleville at ten o’clock in the evening, after he’s already returned from his post at the Montmartre. He fusses a little over him and he dismisses her because Gavroche is staying at a friend’s and she has no one else to fuss over and then leaves, dressed in a short leather skirt, a Guns and Roses shirt and her favorite army boots. He curls on the sofa, barefoot in a pair of sweatpants and the same paint-stained shirt, his hair pulled in a ponytail and his blue eyes surrounded by deep, purplish bags, nursing a bottle of whiskey. The room is already spinning slightly when he hears a knock at the door and he tries to muffle a groan, in order to pretend nobody’s at home.

“OPEN THAT DOOR! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, ASSHOLE, I CAN LITERALLY HEAR THE GEARS IN YOUR ALREADY WASTED BRAIN STRUGGLING TO THINK OF A WAY TO HIDE FROM US!” He immediately recognizes Courfeyrac's voice. Sometimes he might not feel like it, but he has inevitably become a member of Les Amis. He joins in most of their meetings, always being a distant spectator from his corner near the restrooms of the café Musain, finding loopholes in Enjolras’ speeches and mocking his opinions most of the time, driving his furious. He can’t believe or admit it, but Joly, Courfeyrac and Bossuet like him, Jehan and Bahorel seem to care for him and with Feuilly he shares some kind of a quiet, mutual respect. Even Combeferre allows the hint of an amused or admiring smile to show sometimes, but he clearly doesn’t understand why. He does his best to become detestable, his sketches are nothing remarkable and he has puked on the floor in the middle of once during a meeting, but he can see the pity in their expressions and that’s why they tolerate him.

“Fuck you, I’m really not inside!” he hears himself shouting.

“OPEN UP OR I’M PISSING IN THE KEYHOLE, BUTTHEAD! MY AIM IS REMARKABLE!” Bahorel.

Grantaire stands up with a groan. He’s already slightly dizzy and he wishes he would spend an eternity on that couch, watching ‘90s TV shows in which people laugh pretentiously on the background, but the world is such a cruel place.

Courfeyrac and Bahorel are standing on the doorway with ridiculously wide smiles on their faces and they push their way into Éponine’s apartment. They both hug him and it’s an explosive combination, they have the most murderous bear grips in the group. He knows they too are slightly tipsy already, and Courfeyrac starts twirling around the room, raising cushions and searching underneath, literally breathing sass with every movement. “Where the fuck are some decent clothes?” he moans. “We’re not taking you out in those rags!” Courfeyrac himself is wearing a bright blue blazer with matching brogues and insufferably tight, maroon pants, paired with a shiny bowtie. Bahorel is in a fitted black vest and a leather jacket over it and rests back on the couch, placing his boots on the coffee table, near the ashtray full with smoked cigarettes. “’Ponine will have your nuts for a trophy on your wall if she finds out,” mutters Grantaire as Courfeyrac grabs a hoodie and a pair of jeans from the armchair and throws it on him. Bahorel whistles. “Sounds hot!”

Grantaire rolls his eyes because Bahorel can’t possibly find sexy the idea of being castrated, yet Éponine has that effect on people, then turns to Courfeyrac. “Look, I’m not going out tonight.”

Courfeyrac picks up Gavroche’s Nerf gun from the floor and aims at him. “Oh no, no friend, that’s not right! Under no circumstances should you be under the impression that we’re leaving you in here to get yourself drunk.” A rubber bullet finds Grantaire on the forehead and Courfeyrac beams excitedly as if Christmas has come six months earlier. “We’re taking you OUT to get drunk!”

“Enjolras will be there, Combeferre threated to block his internet connection.” Bahorel is casually playing with the orange bullet, his raw features innocent like a nun’s.

The little piece of shit.

*

The Corinthe is a dark little bar in the Quartier Latin with a neon sign and a red antique bicycle outside. Inside it’s a haze of smoke. Sometimes the music is good, some others really crappy but the booze is nice and cheap and it’s where Les Amis first hung out a couple of years ago when they first got together, so it still is somehow significant for them, almost in the same way as the Musain. That’s the reason Enjolras follows them when they go out, even though he hardly enjoys himself, he barely drinks or smokes anything and he spends most of the time sitting in a corner, exchanging glances with Combeferre –at least when his best friend does not have his moment of socializing and flirting in an unexpectedly skillful way- as the music is too loud for them to discuss anything without shouting on the top of their lungs until their throat is sore.

He can see that most of his friends are already tipsy. Courfeyrac’s shirt is half-unbuttoned and he’s trying to fill his list with the best friends that he’s kissed. Jehan doesn’t seem to mind; he’s walking around with most of his hair escaping the braid on his shoulder, smiling seductively and ending up to nibble on Courfeyrac’s throat, huskily breathing erotic poetry against his boyfriend’s skin. Feuilly is unusually talkative with a couple of girls he’s met, his beret slipping dangerously from the one side of his ginger head. Marius is miserably weeping with his head on Cosette’s lap, who is laughing uncontrollably at Bahorel’s dangerous lap dancing on a chair. As for Joly and Bossuet, they’re both giggling frantically, wrapped in Musichetta’s huge pink shawl, first pretending that it’s a tent, then tying it around their heads and setting new fashion trends –Joly is on no account trying to fit in her heels. Nor Bossuet is sporting her huge hoop earrings.

Enjolras feels tired. Not annoyed. They’re his friends and he wouldn’t rather be with anyone else. But his life has been a blur of sleepless nights lately , papers and essays, speeches and plans. For once he realizes what Combeferre has been warning him about: he’s been exhausting himself to death and now he’s craving for his bed. He wishes he would be home, rest a bit before catching up with the tons of work he needs to finish. And just when he’s dreaming of the warmth of his blanket, the security of his mattress and the softness of the pillow when his head will land on it, Grantaire appears before him, tattering with a bottle of Jack Daniels wrapped protectively between his fingers. His dark hair is pulled back to a ponytail that’s coming loose, a few curls hanging in front of his blue eyes which are glowing brightly in the dim light of the bar. He’s dressed in a green plaid shirt and a Beatles t-shirt underneath and Enjolras sees a necklace he hadn’t noticed before. It’s a small, old pawn of domino with two sixes, hanging from a piece of black rope around his neck. Enjolras feels annoyed at the sight, but then again it might be Grantaire’s overall state. He doesn’t have time to think whether he likes the necklace or not, because the drunken man is approaching him dangerously, stumbling over a chair or two with a horrible mocking smile on his face, that shows off most of his crooked teeth.

“ _Hullo_ ,” he smirks, leaning with his side against the wall of the bar. “Not drinking tonigh’, are you, kid?”

Enjolras scrunches up his nose in disgust. “You stink of whiskey,” he groans, being hardly heard what with the loud beat of the music, pounding through their bodies. They stand like that, staring at each other and Enjolras wonders how lower a man can fall than that. “You’re drunk,” he states accusingly, and he immediately feels slightly dumb for stating the obvious.

“Why yes,” slurs Grantaire, tilting his head on the side, closer to Enjolras’. “I’m  _so_ drunk but guess what? I’ll still be drunk in the morning and you’ll still be beautiful.” He looks confused for a minute or two. “Said that wrong, didn’t I?” A wide, dreamy grin appears on his face as he leans dangerously forward, his forehead almost touching with Enjolras’. “But shit you’re  _beautiful,_ so beautiful that the world goes dark because you confiscate all of the light with those shimmering curls of yours, you are Apollo incarnate, an innocent virginal Apollo with the most sinful eyes and I want to drink you…”

Enjolras sighs exasperatedly. He doesn’t have time for this right now. Grantaire is drunk as fuck and he doesn’t know what he saying, not that this is new but Enjolras can’t stand it anyway. “You’re impossible.”

“Come on, Enj,” moans Grantaire, throwing his arms around Enjolras’ neck and hanging off of him.

Enjolras shuts his eyes tiredly, feeling the beginning of a headache creeping up beneath his meninges. Grantaire’s breath is heavy, almost asthmatic against the skin of his neck and he knows that, as much as he’d like to abandon him here and tell him to fuck off, he can’t possibly do it, he wouldn’t do it to any of his friends even though he doesn’t really know whether he considers the street artist to be a friend of his. “I can’t decide which nickname is the worst,” he shouts in order to be heard over the music, throwing a stiff arm in order to support Grantaire’s weight although he has the urge to leave the man land pathetically on the floor.

“Why, they’re all true!” croons Grantaire. “You are a kid, a blond grumpy baby but you are also a God of light because look at you, God you’re _beautiful,_ why are you so beautiful? And your name is Enj,” he leans closer, clinging on his torso and his unshaven chin touches his cheek as his steamy breath brushes against his ear, sending a shiver down his spine, “comme un  _ange_.” His voice is a slow, breathy whisper and Enjolras shudders.

“You’re so smashed,” murmurs Enjolras, “you must go home.” He looks around the room desperately. Grantaire is heavy and Enjolras is thinner than him. His shoulders are already going numb from the weight clutching on him. Bahorel is playing the sexual predator to the girl Feuilly’s flirting with, or maybe to Feuilly himself. Courfeyrac, who knows where Grantaire lives, is pressed against a wall by Jehan and they’re snogging senselessly, not stopping to take a breath, fingers tangled between the poet’s loose, disheveled braid and a hand digging deep into the back pocket of his incredibly tight, lilac jeans. As for Combeferre, he’s having a conversation with a girl he seems to have just met and Enjolras knows that he can’t interrupt him, he can’t use his best friend’s help now. He literally drags Grantaire to Musichetta who’s trying to take her feather scarf away from Joly and Marius, and shouts to top the beat of the music: “I’m taking R home, okay?” The dark-skinned beautiful woman nods with an encouraging grin and pats his arm. Elbowing his way between the drunk and smoking crowd is a nightmare which goes straight to Enjolras’ head that’s now throbbing violently, but soon they find their way outside and the cold air of the night slaps their cheeks violently, bringing Enjolras back to reality and giving him the courage to walk. “I can’t possibly move if you’re hanging off of me,” he growls quietly, trying to release himself from Grantaire’s strangling grip. Can’t you walk?”

“Can’t,” murmurs Grantaire against the crook of his neck. “Feel like poo, want nap.” And with that, he unwraps his arms from around Enjolras and lets his body fall like a puppet whose strings were cut, in front of the blonde’s incredulous eyes. They’re in a fuckin’  _alley_ of all places, and Grantaire is lying on the ground just a meter away from two bins bursting with garbage and a cat meows creepily, producing a metallic clank as it jumps on a cap and disappears. The drunken man is resting his head on his palms as if he’s curled in his bed underneath his fluffy blankets, a sleepy smile engraved on his face as he makes himself comfortable. Enjolras whimpers in desperation and kneels on the road, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist rather violently. “For FUCK’S sake,” he huffs, forcing him to stand up on his own feet. Grantaire seems suddenly fully awake and pulls Enjolras in a hug. “You’re so soft,” he chuckles hoarsely. “Oh Enj, you smell so good!”

“Unlike you,” snorts Enjolras as they finally continue walking, his head aching in a way that almost makes him feel like it’s the entire fault of Grantaire’s presence and of his arms around him. “You reek of alcohol. It’s disgusting.”

“Why do you never give me anything to do?” Grantaire suddenly blurts out, throwing his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “You sent Joly to ta’k about abortion, Fewy’s dealing with the schools and ‘Ferre with the pamphlets. I wanna be useful TOO!”

Enjolras presses his palm against Grantaire’s mouth. “Shut up,” he hisses as they walk at the Boulevard St. Michel. “You’ll wake the whole city!”

“’ou d’nt trhus’ me,” mumbles Grantaire sadly, his voice muffled by the other’s hand. Enjolras can feel his palm growing damp from the drunkard’s steamy breath.

“Of course I don’t trust you,” he snaps. “Fuck, look at you! You’re wasted and disgusting and pathetic and all you do is mock us and our cause! You don’t believe in any of this!

“I believe in nothing, but the truth of who we are,” slurs Grantaire. “I’m sleepy, Enj!”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “I know. I’m trying to get you to your bed.”

“You don’t need all that fuss to come in bed with me, kid!”

Enjolras thinks he’ll burst into tears and that will be terribly unfortunate. His whole body feels sore and he desperately needs to crash on something soft, a couch or a carpet or whatever the fuck he can find.

“I need to get you home.”

“I HAVE NO HOME!” Great. Grantaire is now singing with his arms spread around him in the middle of the street. How did Enjolras get himself into this in first place? Why didn’t he just leave him to sleep in the fuckin’ alley?

Apparently Grantaire knows how to lead the way even in that state, and without Enjolras realizing what is going on, he stops in front of a greying, old building. They are in a  quiet, dark street and Enjolras doesn’t even know how they ended up there. “Here’s  _me,_ ” slurs Grantaire, leaning back against the door.

“Right. Now I need to get you upstairs,” sighs Enjolras.

“Such a perfect gentleman!”

“Do you have your keys? Give me your keys.”

“Keys,” giggles Grantaire pathetically. Most of his long curls is now hanging loose from the ponytail.

“Yes, R.” Enjolras has never felt more tired and impatient in his life. “Keys. People use them to unlock doors in modern societies.”

Grantaire nods solemnly. “I have my keys.”

Enjolras presses his eyelids shut together. “Give me your keys so that I can get you upstairs.”

“Can’t. Sleepy.” Grantaire’s head falls on Enjolras’ shoulder.

“I need your keys, Grantaire!”

“Mmnhm… Left jeans pocket,” is the only muffled slur Enjolras gets as an answer.

His blood freezes. Seriously, now?  _Seriously?_ What did he do wrong in order to deserve all this shit? Does he have to search in Grantaire’s _pocket_ in order to find the key?

Apparently that’s his last remaining choice so he steadies the man against the wall with one palm pressed against his chest and shoves two fingers inside the impossibly tight pocket of his jeans. He is expecting Grantaire to burst into obnoxious giggles or fall asleep right on the spot, but instead he remains still, sheepishly helping Enjolras to his quest. He can feel the drunk man’s erratic heartbeat beneath his palm, and his heavy, raspy breathing brushing against his hair as he searches. The skin of the man’s hip feels hot through the rigid fabric of his jeans. He immediately senses something cold and metallic and grabs the keys between his fingers, pulling away from Grantaire’s pocket and turning them in the keyhole.

The apartment is tiny, only a dark room which they enter, a bath and another room which Grantaire leads him to without turning on any lights in the meanwhile, therefore Enjolras can’t see anything. His eyes soon get used to the darkness of the room after a while. “You’ll stay here,” murmurs Grantaire. “It’s late and I don’t wann’ a baby like you out in the cruel wor’d.”

Enjolras tries to hide a yawn but in vain. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He really wants to hate Grantaire for everything he’s got him through tonight but he doesn’t really know if he’s capable of hating him. There’s something vulnerable about him tonight, apart from the overall disgusting smell and obnoxiously sarcastic smile, something childish even though Enjolras is the one being called a baby. He really needs to go home but he’s afraid of leaving him here all alone. He would be for every friend.

Not that any of his other friends would make such a fool of themselves and there’s that other issue again:  _is Grantaire a friend at all?_

“Um…” he bites his lower lip as Grantaire falls on the double bed with a thump, the only piece of furniture in the tiny room with the peeling walls, “how do you feel? Do you think you’re going to puke anytime soon?”

“Dunno,” groans Grantaire, his voice muffled by the pillow pressed on his mouth.

That makes things much more difficult. Enjolras’ muscles are aching and his head pounding painfully with his pulse. “I can’t leave,” he says, nudging Grantaire’s shoulder in order to keep him awake. “I need to make sure that you won’t choke on your own vomit, you see.” He can’t believe how he’s come to this, he can only dream of his own warm, comfortable bed and his clean, minimalistic room that smells of books and ink and coffee and freshly printed paper. However he’s heard Joly saying all those terrifying stories of what can happen to a man as drunk as Grantaire is…

“Listen,” he pokes Grantaire. “Is there a couch… or somewhere I can crash till morning? I’m positively exhausted.”

“It’s so hot!” moans Grantaire, rolling on his back. It isn’t, the apartment is freezing and Enjolras finds himself wondering how the man can survive in here without being turned into an ice cube. “Help me out of my jeans!”

Enjolras’ jaw drops incredulously. This is getting more and more surreal as time passes. Maybe he’s drunk too after all, and doesn’t know it yet. “Grantaire, spare me,” he sighs, but Grantaire decides he can do it himself so he clumsily unbuttons his jeans and pushes them off his hips after struggling a little with the boots he’s forgotten to get rid of, remaining in a checkered pair of boxer shorts. Enjolras does his best to not stare at his firm thighs with the curly dark hair, the angle of his knees on the bed and the long limbs spreading over the sheets. “Sleep here, there’s space,” mutters Grantaire hoarsely before hugging his pillow like his life depends on it.

“I can’t, Grantaire. I’m going to the couch.”

“No,” Grantaire’s voice is low, pleading. “Please stay with me tonight, you’re tired and you won’t be comfy in the couch.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “Thank you for your concern but I assure you I’ll be perfectly comfortable…”

Grantaire’s eyes are shut and his chapped lips barely move at all. “Please, it hurts when you leave me,” he murmurs drowsily and suddenly it seems like he isn’t even addressing him, like Grantaire is speaking for something only he knows about.”

Enjolras’ eyelids feel heavy and his head is pounding violently. His every muscle is sore and suddenly the double bed seems like the most welcoming place in the Universe. Grantaire is drunk, drunker than Enjolras could ever imagine a man could get without dying or something like that. He knows he’ll wake in a couple of hours when Grantaire will be fast asleep, make sure that the man is still alive and then leave to go on with his life. Grantaire will remember nothing in the morning and Enjolras’ apartment is so far away from here…

He kicks off his sneakers with a sigh and climbs on the bed, sliding underneath the blanket, still in his jeans, and covering Grantaire with it. It’s warm in there, Grantaire’s breath is thick, hot and humid against the skin of Enjolras’ neck and the lights and shadows of the traffic outside chase each other on the dark ceiling, through the transparent curtains. The blond man is lying on his back, staying still as a corpse with his arms pulled near his torso in order to not make this anymore awkward for the both of them.

“Thank you for staying, Enj,” whispers Grantaire, “you’re so good.”

Enjolras thinks that if he was religious he’d expect to be canonized. “Right. Now sleep.”

He can literally hear the serene smile in Grantaire’s voice and he can smell the whiskey mixed with God knows what else in his breath, without turning to look at him. “Sometimes…” for an instant it sounds like Grantaire has fallen asleep, but then he continues his sentence. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve known you forever.”

Enjolras’ heart leaps in his chest, and he opens his mouth to reply with something he doesn’t know even he’s thinking yet, but Grantaire’s nasal snore indicates that he’s already asleep near him and soon Enjolras’ head goes light and his eyelids slide shut as he gives himself over to the arms of Morpheus.

It’s a dreamless night yet Enjolras is sure still dreams of warm, bare limbs that tangle around his own and arms that reach for his waist and wrap around him, as if they depend on him to survive.

*

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

Enjolras cracks an eyelid open. Bright, white light is entering through the curtains which have a tacky beige-and-orange floral tapestry pattern and are very different from the plain white in his own room. He immediately knows he is not in his own bed and he’d think that something has gone terribly wrong but he can’t, because he hasn’t slept that well in  _ages_ and his head and muscles are full with that fuzzy, serene feeling of a good night’s sleep. He stretches his legs underneath the covers and rolls on his side. The person he is faced with is the last he would imagine: Éponine, that scary friend of Grantaire’s who joined them for one meeting and never showed up again. She’s sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed; the other side is unmade, the pillow thrown over the tangled sheets as if someone left in a hurry, but it feels empty and cold underneath Enjolras’ palm. Her hair is pinned in a messy bun on the top of her head and she hands him a hot mug. He sits up. “Shit…” he murmurs. “What…?”

She shrugs her shoulders, eyeing him suspiciously. “What am I doing in my bedroom, maybe? I came and found the two of you cuddling like octopuses in  _my_  bloody bed. R usually sleeps in the couch when he comes over, thank God Gavroche stayed at another kid because I don’t want my little bro to get into porn from ten, though I’m sure I’m dreaming high. Anyway, he woke up horribly hungover but he’s used to it, the dork, so he threw on some clothes and burst out of the house to go to the Montmartre. He asked me to give you this.” She hands him a wrapped piece of paper, torn from a notebook. Enjolras unwraps it slowly. There is a doodle inside, one of Grantaire’s excellent ones that shows the dark-haired man ugly, drunk and disgusting in King Louis’ clothes, and quickly scribbled  _i’m srry for whatevr happened i don’t remember a damn thing tho i’m sure we didn’t fuck. tu est un ange despite the stick shoved up ur lovely skinny ass._

“I’m sorry, I had no idea this was your bed,” he shrugs his shoulders apologetically, wrapping the sheet again, his pulse accelerating as everything comes back to his mind, everything that had seemed like a distant dream –or  _nightmare-_ up to that point.

Éponine waves her hand dismissively. “’t’s okay, as long as there’s not revolutionary semen on my pillow. You and R didn’t fuck, did you?”

Enjolras winces and feels his cheeks burning as he thankfully brings the mug with the coffee to his lips. “Of course not,” he clears his throat. “He was very drunk and I brought him here. I was exhausted and he asked me to stay. I couldn’t possibly leave him alone.”

“Thank you for bringing him here. He stays for the time being, something…” she bites her lip. “Look, I wouldn’t tell you this but he's like a brother to me and I know he’s hanging a lot around you and your little group. I had thought you were a pretentious little pretty shit with a stick shoved up your ass,” Enjolras opens his mouth to protest, looking extremely offended but Éponine holds up a hand, “let me finish, Goldilocks. Apparently you’re an okay guy so since you spend so much time with him I want you to know. There’s something odd about his apartment. He doesn’t let me visit anymore and he appears all rotten and drunk to my doorstep. I just want you lot to take care of him. Please promise me that you won’t blame him.”

Enjolras shuts his eyes and rubs the bridge of his own. “Listen, Éponine. I appreciate how you care for your friend and all, but he wasn’t any of my responsibilities yesterday. If only you saw him… he was downright disgusting.”

Her glance becomes cool,  _frozen._ “It’s not his fault. You’re not one to judge. You don’t know what he’s been through, and he’s trying hard to withdraw. It’s actually very worrying that he gave in yesterday. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Is he… is he an alcoholic?” Enjolras feels guilt creeping slowly inside him.

Éponine gets up from her chair, her expression still cold. “Finish your coffee and then go, alright? My little brother’s coming back and I don’t want him to think I’ve slept with yet another asshole. I’m not calling you an asshole. I’m just saying what Gavroche is going to think.”

Enjolras knows very well that she is indeed calling him an asshole. He nods apologetically and gets off the bed in search of his shoes. When he checks his phone he finds a bunch of texts.

**[From: Courfeyrac, 3:26 PM] where r u**

**[3:28 PM] where is R**

**[3:29 PM] did u strangle him because that’s a pity he has a very pretty ass**

**[3:31 PM] OH GOD YOU LEFT 2GETHER!**

**[3:33 PM] NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE!!**

**[3:34 PM] OUR LITTLE BOY’S GROWING UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**

Enjolras will never get used to the disturbing amount of Courfeyrac’s exclamation marks. Ever.

**[From: Jehan, 3:51 PM] Is everything alright? Please don’t leave him alone if he’s drunk, Joly’s almost in hysterics. I know you can do it! xxx**

**[From: Combeferre, 3:59 PM] Should I expect you tonight? Call me if you need anything.**

He dials Combeferre’s number. After a few agonizing beats he hears his best friend’s voice from the end of the line. “Pick me up?” he hears himself saying hoarsely.

“Sure, where from?”

“Grantaire’s,” he mutters and it sounds wrong, profane, as if he’s robbed Grantaire –and apparently Éponine’s- apartment instead of helping him home.

“Send me a text with the address and I’ll be there in ten.”

No interrogation, no questions, nothing. That’s why he loves Combeferre.


	4. Put your hands into the fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t know how he’s ended up in Jehan and Bahorel’s apartment, invited by Grantaire of all people, Grantaire whom he hasn’t stopped thinking of all those days, Grantaire who’s missed all those meetings, Grantaire who made him scan the café with his stomach leaping everytime he expected him to peer in but in vain... He doesn’t know how he’s actually agreed to lock himself in the ridiculously flowery bathroom and try to change in the weirdest thing he’s ever beheld. “What the fuck is that supposed to be?” he hisses and he knows that Grantaire is fuckin’ waiting outside the door because he hears him cackling.
> 
> “If you wake Jehan up I’ll castrate you. This is an onesie, it is absolutely cool and the latest fuckin’ trend. Besides, I have nothing else to give you. Bahorel and Jehan usually sleep in the nudes, want to follow their example?”  
> *  
> Or the one where Enjolras is afraid of storms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the song 'Into the fire' by Thirteen Senses. You should definitely listen to it, it's a marvellous song!  
> Feedback is more than welcome!

Combeferre enters their apartment and leaves the keys of the car on the coffee table. Enjolras can feel his piercing glance on him through his spectacles, even though he knows that his friend is trying hard to disguise it. He knows that his hair is ruffled and his clothes wrinkled and his eyes puffy from sleep. “You look well rested,” mutters Combeferre in an approvingly reserved tone.

Enjolras nods. “I slept. Now I think I’m ready to finish to plan our speeches for the middle school.”

“You don’t need to work yourself too hard, we still have time,” smiles Combeferre, unwrapping the scarf that’s around his neck and throwing it on the couch before he heads to the kitchen. “Have you had breakfast?’

“Coffee.”

“Coffee isn’t acceptable as proper breakfast.”

Enjolras stands in the middle of the living room. “Combeferre?”

Combeferre stops and turns around to face him. “Yes, Enjolras?”

“What…” Enjolras runs his palm through his forehead. “What do you think of Grantaire?”

It’s a small sigh that Combeferre quickly swallows and turns to a smile. “I hardly am the one who could express an opinion. I don’t know him all that well!” He notices Enjolras’ intense gaze and walks back in the living room. “Do you want to sit down and chat a bit before you continue the speeches?”

Enjolras takes a deep breath. Combeferre is God sent, end of story. “Yes, thank you.”

They move to the couch. Combeferre takes a seat opposite him, on his favorite armchair. “Is everything okay between you and…?”

Enjolras sighs impatiently. “Nothing is ever okay between me and Grantaire. You know that.”

Combeferre takes off his glasses and clears them on the fabric of his sweater. “We all know that Grantaire can become quite…”

“Disgusting. Insufferable. A dick.”

“A handful,” Combeferre corrects him diplomatically, looking half-amused half-disapproving. “I just think that sometimes you need to be more patient with him. It’s not that you are wrong when you get upset,” he rushes to add when he notices his frowning, “but you have to admit that he is really smart and talented, not to mention capable of helping us with our cause.”

“But he doesn’t want to, you know he doesn’t!” snaps Enjolras. “He’s a cynic, he loves being horrible all the time and laughing at our face, I don’t even know why he keeps showing up at the meetings.”

Combeferre raises an eyebrow and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Do you honestly not know?”

Enjolras has started to feel terribly confused and uncomfortable at Combeferre’s meaningful look that he fails to decode. “Of course not, do you?”

Combeferre is suddenly looking really tired as if he didn’t sleep at all since the text message he sent him in the middle of the night. He runs his fingers through his sandy brown hair and then raises his eyes to meet with those of Enjolras. “Grantaire doesn’t feel about you exactly like the rest of us do,” he says slowly, as if he’s explaining to a child that the Earth is round.

“Of course he doesn’t,” blood starts boiling in Enjolras’ veins. “He hates me!”

Combeferre’s eyes are glowing dangerously and suddenly Enjolras feels fed up with everyone around him. As his friend opens his mouth to speak, he thinks of standing up and going for a nap, when his phone vibrates in his pocket.

They both go silent as he answers with a sigh. He doesn’t know the number and he immediately realizes that the voice belongs to a female. Slightly hoarse, slightly shaky. Éponine.

“Is he alright?” is the first thing he hears himself asking.

“He’s still at work. Listen,” she says hurriedly, as if she wants to quickly spit out a secret. “What has he told you about his place?”

He honestly doesn’t know what kind of question is this and he can feel Combeferre’s questioning glance burning his back as he gets up and walks to the corridor. He tries to think, having absolutely no idea why he’s doing it and feeling overly impatient already. “Um, nothing really?” he realizes that’s the truth, Grantaire has never talked to them about his apartment. He can faintly recall his throaty voice, brushing it off whenever Joly or Bahorel brought the subject up. “Look, I can’t remember. Why?”

There is silence from the other end of the line, interrupted by a monotonous clicking, as if she’s biting her nails. “Apollo,” she murmurs, giving him the urge to shout in fury because he wants people to stop calling him like that, Apollo was a fuckin’ self-righteous dickhead that killed a guy just for… Yet he doesn’t. Something is wrong and he can feel it. “I know that you don’t give a fuck, but I kinda searched his backpack.” It’s quite alarming to hear the voice that belongs to the scariest female Enjolras has ever met to tremble so and he suddenly wants to comfort the girl he barely knows but Grantaire’s caricature was right, he sucks at people. “I think he’s homeless. I don’t know how the fuck I had not realized he’d been kicked out, I’m such a fuckin’ idiot…”

Éponine keeps on rambling and he can hear her smoking and inhaling greedily in the smoke but he doesn’t listen anymore. He needs to repeat the astonishing piece of information in his head several times before he grows familiar with the horror it gives him. Grantaire is homeless. Grantaire spends his days in the Place de Tertre at the Montmartre, drawing tourists’ portraits in the cold, his knuckles dry and bleeding and his nose red, only to have nowhere to return to afterwards, no place to call home and no bed to seek comfort in. Grantaire could have been robbed. Grantaire could have been beat up, assaulted, _raped._

Grantaire could have died from the cold.

Painful guilt starts throbbing dully inside his chest and he knows that he’s worrying Combeferre with his appearance but he can’t deal with any of it right now. Grantaire is homeless.

Words are ringing painfully through his head and suddenly he doesn’t feel so well rested anymore. _Robbed. Beat up. Raped. Dead._

“…A shelter! A fuckin’ shelter, for fuck’s sake! And I believed him and fuck, why am I even exposing my best friend to _you,_ what am I thinking, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to talk to him, I have fucked this up so much…”

He’s soon brought back to reality. “Listen, Éponine.” He sounds collected and decisive, like he does when he defends a cause. “Come over. I’ll text you my address. Talk with Combeferre, he knows what to do.” _And he’s been doing that ridiculous thing Combeferre does when he meets someone he likes and doesn’t stop casually mentioning him in the most random of sentences for a month afterwards, thinking we don’t notice._ “Call whoever you think that can help you solve this. I’m going to find him.”

There is a pause. Enjolras takes a deep breath and runs the bridge of his palm over his forehead. He hears Éponine breathing heavily. “Right,” she croaks finally. “Tell your roomie to have coffee. With brandy. And, Enjolras?”

“Yes?”

“Be gentle.”

The words sound eerily familiar as he hears Éponine hanging up with a click, like he’s heard them before in some unidentified, blurry past. “Make coffee. With fuckin’ _brandy_ ,” he blurts out, grabbing his coat underneath Combeferre’s bewildered, alarmed glance, and bursting out of the apartment.

*

He’s burning with shame.

He’s not one to be ashamed of himself after his several hangovers but now God, _he’s burning with shame._

It’s true that Grantaire and dignity have long ago stopped fitting together in the same sentence, but he can’t recall ever having made such a fool of himself in the presence of anybody, let alone of the only man he cares for in the world, the man who has become an obsession, an addiction of the worse, and trust him, he is _pretty much familiar_ with addictions.

It’s a cold morning, cloudy and damp and grey, and surprisingly enough he’s done four portraits until now but his mind isn’t there, all he can think about is Enjolras wrapped around him, Éponine’s bed, Enjolras’ cold feet under the sheets, Enjolras’ strong grip, the disdain and disgust on his face, Enjolras, _Enjolras._ And his head hurts, it hurts so fuckin’ much because _what did he have to drink_?

He’s doing a little boy’s caricature when he hears his name, or rather an ‘R’ which could also be interpreted as an incoherent growl and under different circumstances it would send a wave of desire straight to his cock but he’s hungover and tired and sore and he’s working, drawing a little kid, for fuck’s sake, no time for masochistic fantasies of Enjolras snapping at him.

Only he hadn’t counted on a tiny insignificant detail. That Enjolras would be _here._

He’s walking towards him, or running, no it’s that sort of quick walking that decisive, gorgeous people do in the movies, with the tail of their coats bouncing in the air behind them and their cheeks flushing furiously and their golden hair swishing in the cold air, not that many movie stars can ever _dream_ of looking as glorious as Enjolras does at the moment, and as pissed off as well.

He deserves it. He deserves the hatred and the disgust and he knows he’s banned from the meetings and that Enjolras will never want to see him again. His cheeks are burning despite the cold and his heart does that thing again, only it’s a sad, retreated sort of thing because he hurts physically at the idea of being dismissed forever by Enjolras, he inevitably knows that he has to keep seeing him in order to keep breathing.

The child –thankfully not his dad- has noticed the scene and his eyes are moving with vivid interest as Enjolras elbows his way through the crowd and approaches him. Grantaire sighs, meaningfully gesturing at the caricature with his head. He at least hopes he won’t lose that portrait, he needs the money. A sudden thought crosses his mind. Will he return to Éponine’s tonight? Where will he go?

“Good morning,” he mutters when Enjolras is close enough, never taking his eyes from his chalks. “Don’t say anything, you’re right. I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“No,” says Enjolras sternly. “No, _no._ You’re not getting out of this. We’re having this conversation _now._ ”

The child’s father is looking both amused and confused while he tries to focus on the caricature and the child itself is on no account posing still anymore which makes life a lot more difficult. “Listen, Enjolras. I’m sorry I got drunk, and I’m sorry I made an ass of myself…”

“No,” Enjolras makes another step forward, standing tall before his sitting figure. “You’ve lied to us and now is when we deal with it _.”_

Grantaire is sitting speechless, his hand with the chalk hanging midair. Nothing makes sense anymore.

World is a pretty fucked up place.

*

When les Amis decide to solve a problem, they all unite and do it pretty fast.

Éponine is, of course the first to insist on taking him home, as they’ve been best friends since ever, but they don’t let her because they all know the problems she already has to deal with.

Feuilly is already crashing sometimes in Courfeyrac and Marius’ because the place more spacious, and Joly and Bossuet immediately offer but they all secretly know how awkward it can become for the two lovers to be making loud sex with Musichetta in the next room while he’ll be getting drunk in front of the TV, watching porn and playing Angry Birds on his phone. Grantaire moves in with Jehan and Bahorel.

As for Enjolras and Combeferre’s apartment, of course that isn’t even a possibility.

Apparently Jehan lives very close to Éponine and the three of them –occasionally with Bahorel and Feuilly who are aggressive as fuck towards each other- become really close friends. Joly and Bossuet always drink and laugh with him too when they hit the bars, and Grantaire would feel gloriously accepted if he wasn’t dying with shame.

Pity, it’s all pity. He was fuckin’ homeless. What was he thinking, for fuck’s sake? He’ll never forget the words Enjolras spat in the middle of Montmartre. _Robbed. Raped. Dead._ Who was he trying to fool? _Éponine_? As if he had forgotten what had happened to the last man who tried to fool Éponine…

He tries his best to masochistically think about it over and over again, how low he must have fallen to the others’ eyes, how Enjolras hardly talks to him at all anymore and when he does Grantaire always fucks the conversation up. They don’t hiss snarky comments to each other anymore. Grantaire simply gets drunk because he can’t do otherwise, not when his head throbs horribly and his insides hurt whenever when they’re away and everything becomes cold like a fuckin’ dementors attack, and then he shows the worst of himself and Enjolras simply stares, he stares in disgust and distaste and then turns his head to the opposite direction and continues the meeting. He’s cold and distant and Grantaire knows he deserves it, he deserves the pain taking over him and consuming him slowly with every minute that passes, he deserves every agonizing nightmare and the aching need to draw the most horrible, terrifying images.

At his rare sober moments he can’t stop feeling immensely thankful. He imagines dealing with all this mess that his life has lately become on the street, having nowhere to go. He has a bed, he has a shower, there is internal heating and living with Jehan is, apparently, easier than breathing. Well, maybe apart from the nights Courfeyrac spends in his room with the two of them being incredibly _loud,_ but he and Bahorel have long ago learnt to sleep with earplugs or simply turn on the volume of their own porn, not that Courfeyrac and Jehan mind at all. If only Bahorel had the same taste as him in porn, things would be absolutely perfect. Well, if he didn’t constantly feel like he was nursing a bad headcold together mixed with a terrible hangover, nausea creeping over him even when he isn’t even drunk.

Jehan notices one day. Courfeyrac has stayed for the night and is in the shower, screaming on the top of his lungs what sounds like an altered version of _Call me maybe,_ muffled by the pouring water and the poet peers in the kitchen with a dreamy smile engraved on his face, sign that he’s had quite the night –not that it could slip their attention, Courfeyrac’s “Oh _fuck,_ baby, right _there_!” indicated that the seemingly innocent Jehan was topping rather aggressively this time, and was a sound that had probably traumatized Grantaire for the rest of his life. The man’s long ginger hair is tied in a messy bun on the top of his head and he’s dressed in Courfeyrac’s yellow sweater and a pair of boxer shorts, walking barefoot and seemingly unaware of the chill of the apartment. “Is he sleeping?” he asks quietly, referring to Bahorel with sympathy in his voice.

Grantaire glares at him. “For once Bahorel isn’t here, he stayed at some girl’s place, apparently got laid last night. It’s me you should apologize to.”

Jehan shrugs his shoulders and lets a small chuckle. “I’m sorry, it’s just that sometimes Courf and I get a little… overexcited.”

“Believe me, I’ve noticed, it’s impossible not to” sighs Grantaire, sighs his coffee, black as his soul as Bahorel often teases.

Concern suddenly shadows Jehan’s face and Grantaire feels his warm brown eyes piercing his skin. “I hope it wasn’t our fault that you didn’t sleep tonight, you didn’t have to wake up so early, I know you can go to Montmartre in the afternoon if you want. Why didn’t you stay in bed for a little more?”

Grantaire turns his attention to his mug as if it is the most interesting thing in the universe. “Dunno,” he tilts his head slightly forward. “Couldn’t sleep more, I guess.”

Jehan proceeds to break eggs into a bowl. “You can’t leave just with a coffee again. I’m making you pancakes. You look like death warmed over, you know. You weren’t like that when I first met you.” He doesn’t continue his phrase but they both know what he’s thinking: _And imagine that you used to live on the streets then too._

“I’m fine, Jehan,” he groans, stretching his body backwards against the chair, though he mentally admits that some innocent ol’ pancakes wouldn’t do him any harm.

Jehan narrows his eyes suspiciously yet his voice becomes softer, almost cautious. “It’s just that lately…” he bites his lower lip cautiously, while shuffling the eggs with some milk in the bowl. “You look like a zombie most of the time, and don’t think I haven’t noticed all the missing painkillers. Are you sure you aren’t coming down with something? We could have Joly…”

“You know me, man,” Grantaire interrupts him bitterly, fighting back a flush of annoyance. “Sometimes I get a little too carried away with my booze.”

“You seem like you really haven’t been getting any sleep. I know that changing life from one day to another might be a tad difficult but if there is anything I could do to make you feel comfortable…”

“Look, I am comfortable as hell!” smiles Grantaire half-heartedly, hoping it is reassuring. “I mean, I would be terribly grateful if youconsidered to suck Courfeyrac off when I at least have left the place, but other than that it’s so fuckin’ _angelic_ of you to keep me here and give me your couch and everything, okay? Please don’t worry.”

Jehan seems considerably assured when Courfeyrac enters the kitchen with his hair dripping wet, naked apart from a towel wrapped around his hips and starts talking to them about the pamphlets that Enjolras had asked Grantaire to draw. His insides fill with guilt. He hasn’t even started working on them. It’s when Courfeyrac starts sucking Jehan’s face and there is a high chance his towel might slip off his thighs that Grantaire snorts loudly and grabs his burnt pancakes before leaving the apartment to head to the metro.

*

It all goes to hell one night when Grantaire stays home with a terrible nausea that is most definitely related to all that shit that’s been happening to him lately. He has missed a couple of meetings and he hasn’t seen Enjolras for a while. His chest is aching dully all day, and he finds it only becomes bearable when he returns home and starts drawing again like before, those peculiar images of battles and blood and flames, he can almost smell the gunpowder in the air and he thinks he might vomit any minute. Jehan seriously worries that he’s sick and insists on staying back to look after him but Grantaire curls on the sofa with his sketchbook and brushes it off.

He finally manages to drift into sleep, his legs hanging from the sofa and the living room only lit by the blue light of the TV, but soon he’s waken by cries. Everything’s fuzzy at first as he’s in between consciousness and unconsciousness but he can make out a few words including _different, idiot, Flirt, fooled,_ even though he doesn’t really understand the meaning of any of it right now. He pretends to still be asleep when he hears Courfeyrac’s unmistakable voice genuinely apologizing, cursing, and shouting “But I _love you_!”

“ _Out_ ,” he hears Jehan hissing quietly now. “I still have some dignity left in me, Courfeyrac, and it tells you to fuck off.”

“Please…” protests Courfeyrac but Grantaire hears steps and the door bursting open.

“OUT.”

There is a pregnant silence until Grantaire hears Courfeyrac whimpering “I’m really sorry,” before the door slams closed again.

He is completely awake when he hears Jehan’s choked sobs and he knows he can’t pretend to be asleep anymore. He stretches his knotted body and turns on the light on the side of the couch.

“I woke you up?” asks Jehan almost hysterically, faking a smile between his tears that shimmer in the dim light of the lamp “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

Grantaire stands up, feeling a tight pang of anxiety in his chest, feeling that the world has turned upside down. “Bahorel?” he asks with a croak.

“Still at the bar,” replies Jehan hoarsely.

Grantaire sighs and pats the sofa near him. “Come here, beautiful,” he says. Jehan stumbles his way near him and curls into a ball between the pillows. Grantaire has never seen him so… _small._ He pulls him into his arms. Jehan had used eyeliner that night and all the color is smudged around his empty eyes. His body is shaking and his usual flowery scent is covered by a wave of alcohol and cigarettes. “Tell me,” he murmurs.

“He got drunk,” his voice comes out strangled. “Very drunk, oh R, I’ve never seen him so drunk. It wasn’t like when he runs after Enjolras and Combeferre and Feuilly and tries to kiss them, giggling and wasted. He kissed a girl, a pretty curvy thing, he… he _touched her_. It was different. I felt lost, my legs turned to jelly.” He stiffs in Grantaire’s arms, his body shaking in ugly, angry sobs. “I felt like I didn’t exist there. I hated it.”

Grantaire mentally curses Courfeyrac again and again. He can’t bring himself to believe what sort of person could ever make an angel as Jehan feel that way. He knows how Courfeyrac loves him though, and no matter what a huge prick he might be, he feels sorry for him too. “He was drunk,” he murmurs. “It was just a kiss, you know how flirty he gets…”

“And what am I, R?” his glance was steel as he focused nowhere. “His toy? Pretty little cute Jehan, with his cult poems and dreamy gazes? A break from his heated sex life? I’m more than that, R. I’m much more than that.”

Grantaire pulls him closer and presses his lips on his forehead. “Of course you are much more than that,” he whispers, “Courfeyrac is a prick and I’m sure he’ll be forever regretting it.”

“They’d told me,” Jehan looks away, tears streaming down his smooth cheeks, his teeth gritted and his face looking no older than a teenager’s. “They’d told me he was a flirt! I thought he had changed for me, I thought he was different, such a fuckin’ idiot…”

“Don’t we all, Jehan?” sighs Grantaire pitifully. “Don’t we all? You aren’t an idiot, you are wonderful. Here,” unwrapped his arms around him, “want a smoke?”

Jehan raises his eyes to face him. Something is unusually fierce and savage about his expression. “Yes. Yes, I want a smoke.”

Grantaire fishes for a packet of cigarettes in his pocket and they both walk to the balcony. Jehan leans forward, watching the lights of the traffic while the smoke of the cigarette twirls in waves before his face. His ginger hair is knotted and falling loose on his shoulders and his expression is terrifyingly blank, lost into the sea of rooftops. Grantaire watches him, and as much as his chest hurts, he swears that Jehan has never looked more beautiful. “I love him,” he croaks, never facing him.

“I know,” is all that Grantaire can reply, and he does.

They return to the couch. Jehan cries a little but he’s exhausted. Grantaire not anymore. He holds him and whispers sweet nothings in his ear. Soon he falls asleep, a pained expression on his troubled face. Grantaire notices that outside it has just started to rain, he can hear the pouring rain tapping on the windows. Jehan weighs no more than a feather and he carries him easily to his bed, tucking him under the covers.

The rain soon turns into a storm that Paris hasn’t seen for ages and is threatening to blow the whole building down. The skies have opened and the night has become day because of the lightnings that seem to tear the purple sky in half. Thunders are growling like cannonballs and the wind is about to take the whole city and drown it in the heavy rain that’s hitting the windowpanes, making Grantaire feel like he’s in a wooden ship in the middle of the ocean. He’s almost dozing off on the couch while watching cat videos on the lit screen of his cell and he’s feeling horrible, not knowing whether Jehan’s terrible misfortune caused it or he’s just a lost case. He needs something to drink but he’s too nauseous and dizzy to stand up.

And just then, in the middle of the night, there is a knock on the door.

He immediately thinks that some really strange shit is happening today and thinks his head is spinning too much for him to get up and open the door, but then he thinks of Courfeyrac being drunk and lost out in the storm, and no matter what a butthead the boy might be, Jehan is asleep and he shouldn’t deny a friend some help.

He drags his aching body to the door, every muscle pounding with his pulse, and opens. Well, the only problem is that it most definitely is not Courfeyrac standing there. Unless the rain has turned Courfeyrac to a peculiar creature that bears a terrible resemblance to the lovechild of Enjolras and a duck.

The man is soaked to the bone and looks torn and exhausted, as if he hasn’t slept for several nights as well. His blond hair is flattened and plastered on his head and water is dripping from his face and coat. Grantaire doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or what the hell is happening at all, because everything is spinning around him and the room is drifting into the darkness, his head meddles with the mayhem of the storm and his feet are betraying him.

Wet, strong hands wrap tightly around his arms, supporting him upright. “You alright?” Enjolras asks alarmed. Grantaire hasn’t seen him for so long and he thinks whether he’d forgotten how beautiful he is. He isn’t alright, oh not at all. He’s worse than ever and his chest is ready to explode with fire and he doesn’t know what the fuck is happening to him, he hasn’t even _drunk,_ but at least Enjolras is supporting him so there isn’t any fear of collapsing on his feet ever so dramatically.

“I’m fine,” he manages to stand up properly. “What the fuck are you doing outside? It’s the apocalypse tonight!”

Enjolras scans alarmed the living room behind Grantaire’s shoulder. “I came looking for Courfeyrac. Combeferre has the car and he couldn’t go because she drove Éponine home, she was drunk…”

Grantaire had already started to feel much better, a gentle warmth spreading from his toes to his neck beneath Enjolras’ touch, even though the man’s radiating chill and wetness right now, but he immediately jumps up at the sound of such news with his heart leaping on his throat. “Is she okay?”

“I guess so, she just had the Seine to drink,” Enjolras tuts disapprovingly and Grantaire feels the immediate urge to punch his beautiful, beloved face right on the spot, “but Combeferre saw after her and now I worry more about Courfeyrac. He’s drunk and somewhere out there, not in his place or ours and I called Bossuet and he’s not at theirs. I understand he’s not here either?”

Grantaire shakes his head, feeling magically stronger than a minute ago. “It’s been almost an hour since he left.” He feels a pang of jealousy at the way that Enjolras, despite being repeatedly accused for being a marble statue, cares for his best friend, in the way Grantaire would beg to ever be cared for by him. “I wouldn’t worry. Courfeyrac can hold his liquor, it’s normal that he’s upset and he should be, he’s been a total dickhead tonight. It’s mostly Jehan you should be worried about right now.”

Enjolras exhales and his chest falls as if he had been holding too much air in his lungs all this time. “How is he?” he whispers.

Grantaire grimaces. “Sleeping.” He steps back. “Come on, get inside, you’ll catch your fuckin’ death on this doorstep. You need to change.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “I can’t. I need to go look for Courfeyrac.”

“Do you have the car?”

“No, I took the metro.” A thunder roars outside and the floor vibrates beneath their feet. “I really need to go though.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” snorts Grantaire, dragging him inside by his soaked jacket. “I already worry about Jehan, Courfeyrac and Éponine. I’d much rather you stay here until morning instead of being drowned or sexually assaulted in a Parisian neighborhood such as this in such an hour. You’re too pretty to be out all on your own.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes, seemingly offended despite the humor in Grantaire’s voice, and just then his phone buzzes. He reaches for it in his pocket and Grantaire watches with vivid interest as the screen flashes in the dark living room. “It’s Marius,” Enjolras mutters with relief. “Courfeyrac returned home, Cosette will talk with him.”

“See?” Grantaire can hardly swallow a grin. “The bastard found his way home. Now you’ll be good and stay here or else Jehan will strangle me with those hideous kitten tapestry cushions when he finds out in the morning that I let you go.”

Enjolras parts his lips to object but then the whole apartment is shaken by a thunder and the night becomes day through the windows. “Fine,” he nods with a sigh. “I’m sorry for… this.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “Don’t mention it. I’m going to bring you towels and pajamas.” He has never felt more eager to breathe in his life. He doesn’t know why, but suddenly he feels like there is a chance for the pain to go away.

*

He doesn’t know how he’s ended up in Jehan and Bahorel’s apartment, invited by Grantaire of all people, Grantaire whom he hasn’t stopped thinking of all those days, Grantaire who’s missed all those meetings, Grantaire who made him scan the café with his stomach leaping everytime he expected him to peer in but in vain... He doesn’t know how he’s actually agreed to lock himself in the ridiculously flowery bathroom and try to change in the weirdest thing he’s ever beheld. “What the fuck is that supposed to be?” he hisses and he knows that Grantaire is fuckin’ waiting _outside the door_ because he hears him cackling.

“If you wake Jehan up I’ll castrate you. This is an onesie, it is absolutely cool and the latest fuckin’ trend. Besides, I have nothing else to give you. Bahorel and Jehan usually sleep in the nudes, want to follow their example?”

Enjolras curses once again, finally managing to slip into the red and grey sort of thing which feels so ridiculous and stares at the mirror for one last time, his blond wet locks already drying into curls, before walking outside the bathroom.

“You have very weird taste in sleepwear,” huffs Enjolras and Grantaire smirks quietly. “It suits you like a _glove_!” He whispers. He’s in a paint-stained t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants which looks much more decent than the onesie and his long hair is tied in a low ponytail that falls around his shoulder. A few stray dark curls are brushing his raw skin and Enjolras feels the most peculiar urge to touch him because suddenly his head clears from the unbearable fuzziness of the past few days and his chest feels lighter. He doesn’t know what causes it but he’s drawn to Grantaire in the most inexplicable of ways. Their eyes lock and the brunet is about to go check on Jehan when a violent thunder explodes in the sky, making the floor underneath their feet tremble and the walls to flash with the lightning, causing Enjolras to jump up, startled, instinctively wrapping his fingers around Grantaire’s wrist. His pupils are dilated and immediately everything goes dark. “Shit,” huffs Grantaire, “power blackout. Exactly what we needed right now.” They can see through the windows of the living room that the whole neighborhood has been drowned into darkness. Another thunder erupts and Enjolras jumps up without a warning, tightening his grip around Grantaire and immediately hating himself for it.

A violent flush immediately covers his face and he can only be thankful for the darkness in the living room aside the lightnings that enter through the window as he tries to collect himself, feeling more ashamed than ever.

“Hey, it’s okay,” hushes him Grantaire softly and Enjolras rushes to shake his head fervently.

“No don’t worry, I’m fine, just… startled!” he hates himself for jumping up. It’s the most ridiculous thing he could ever have done. God how could he let that happen? The man who beats the fuck out of cops in rallies, afraid of _thunderstorms_?

Without a warning, a third thunder comes and he’s startled and shuddering again, but Grantaire is fast enough to wrap his own fingers around those of Enjolras and hold both of his hands tightly. “No, don’t feel bad, Enj. It’s alright. Please don’t feel bad.” His voice is unusually gentle and soothing in the darkness, and Enjolras feels something inside him to melt at the sound of it.

He nods slowly, his heart rate a different, deceiving storm in his chest, not knowing whether it’s a result of the storm or of Grantaire’s warm, tight grip around his hands.

“Come on,” whispers Grantaire, “let’s find some candles.”

Enjolras tries to hold back a yawn but in vain. “Or we could just use the flashlight of our phones to go to sleep,” suggests Grantaire, reconsidering.

Enjolras clears his throat, pointing at the window hit by the rain after their eyes get used in the dark. “You said it yourself, it’s the apocalypse.” It is like holding Grantaire’s hands shoves every shadow that’s been haunting him away all this time. Suddenly he knows it’s all he’s been seeking through all those sleepless nights, yet he can’t verbalize it, he can’t even believe it himself, he _hates_ to believe it. “I don’t see how sleeping may be possible.”

It is. It is very possible indeed. Enjolras is exhausted. He knows he will regret everything in the morning. But for now they’re both resting in Bahorel’s double bed with their hands clasped together, sharing a silent deal of mutual comfort and for once again he’d thought this would be so hard, that he’d be restless and limp and frozen, trying not to touch so much or interrupt the other with his breathing and position of sleeping, that he’d hardly manage to sleep all night but it’s natural and comforting and the way it should be, Grantaire’s warm, steady breathing against his skin and the warmth pressed against his body and Grantaire is so different from that drunken night in his place, and they soon fall asleep despite the thunders banging on the windows.

It is the most peaceful sleep he’s had in years. _Since the last time they slept together,_ he wants to think but he can’t allow himself to do so. It’s absolutely ridiculous a thing to assume but he can’t deny the facts. Grantaire’s clammy fingers around his own take away all the nightmares and inexplicable discomfort in his head, when no painkiller seemed to ever work, driving Combeferre to endless worrying. He wakes up with his arm around Grantaire’s torso and his forehead against the man’s nape. Grantaire’s leg is hooked around his own and he finds that he can hardly move. The rain has stopped and he’s thankful for the blanket around them that keeps away the pleasant morning chill.

Enjolras feels epically fucked in every possible way.

He can only be thankful that he doesn’t feel Bahorel’s presence anywhere around the apartment and he curses mentally at the possibility of needing to spend the rest of his life sleeping with Grantaire in other people’s beds in order to not feel like his head is about to explode any minute.

He tries to disentangle himself from Grantaire’s embrace but the man is clinging on him like a baby, a peaceful smile forming on his unshaven face, his wild hair untied from the ponytail and spread upon the pillow. Enjolras suddenly realizes how little he knows about the secretive, mysterious man, who had managed to go on for months being homeless and not let anyone notice. He doesn’t know what is happening to him, or at least what has _started_ happening to him since last night, but his knuckles are gently brushing against Grantaire’s cheek and he’s already swearing through his teeth when he realizes that the man is stirring. He smells of cigarettes and faintly of oranges but he can detect no alcohol in his breath. The artist soon cracks an eye open. “I’m sorry,” he immediately mutters, pulling away and untangling himself from the sheets.

“What are you sorry for?” Enjolras asks in an amused, quiet voice, the side of his face pressed on the pillow.

Grantaire rolls on his back and rubs his eyes with the bridges of his hands. “Fuck, I don’t really know. Did the rain stop or did we all drown and currently are in heaven?”

Enjolras snorts. “I highly doubt any of us would ever go to heaven, even if it existed which is highly unlikely, if you want my opinion.”

Grantaire sits up. “Jehan,” he mutters and Enjolras remembers.

He watches Grantaire as he throws himself up and ruffles his mop of hair and he almost forgets how to breathe. How exactly is he going to show up before Jehan all casually? What is he supposed to say, about him waking up in his place, about the man’s recent breakup?

Fortunately Jehan is an angel, and with a pang of guilt he realizes that not only he’s not about to question anything when he enters the kitchen, trying in vain to flatten his tousled hair, but he’s already made coffee for the both of them and is climbed on Grantaire’s lap, resting his head on the artist’s shoulder. Their hair is long and beautiful and Enjolras feels odd, unwanted, he realizes that they’re friends and he doesn’t know how to comfort a man especially when such a thing has happened.

“Good morning, Enjolras,” says Jehan with a faint smile, the usual melody lost from his voice. “Nice onesie.”

“Thanks,” replies Enjolras, feeling particularly overwhelmed at everything that’s not familiar. He absently thinks of his cell phone while running his fingers over the onesie, wondering if he could somehow pack it underneath his shirt and have something of Grantaire every time he’d feel asphyxiated in his room. Combeferre might be worried, he didn’t remember to check his messages. “How are you feeling, Jehan?” he asks, thankfully taking a mug in his hands. Grantaire who had been staring at him distantly, almost dreamily until then, shoots him a warning look behind Jehan’s hair. The poet shrugs his shoulders and does not say a thing.

“I know that you probably don’t wish to talk about it yet,” mutters Enjolras, hoping he doesn’t sound as awkward as he feels, “but he has never loved anyone like he loves you.”

Jehan’s face grows pale, so pale that the contrast with his freckles and purple marks under his eyes is almost deathly. He gets up from Grantaire’s lap and tries to switch the topic, managing to drop a dish while washing them.

After Enjolras has changed into his dried clothes, he leaves the onesie neatly folded on the bed and something inside him stings. Grantaire escorts him to the door. They don’t say anything about it, they just know that his presence there makes Jehan worse and Courfeyrac needs him more right now.

“About the…”

“When…”

They speak first while Enjolras stands in the doorway, waiting for the elevator to come up. A teasing smirk appears on Grantaire’s face. “You first.”

“No, you first.”

“Well then, I have started working on the sketches you guys requested. I’ll let you know when they’re ready.”

“You have?” gapes Enjolras. “I thought…”

Grantaire raises an eyebrow, looking slightly offended. “Always that tone of surprise. Now what did you want to say?”

_When am I going to see you again? You have nice hair. I want to see what you’ve been drawing._

_Can I touch you?_

Enjolras clears his throat. _When? It doesn’t hurt when we’re together._

“I just wanted to say thank you. For uh, for keeping me here during the storm. And the like.”

Grantaire nods, looking faintly disappointed, as if he had been expecting something different. “Goodbye, Apollo. See you at the next meeting, if the group dynamics don’t resemble of the Third World War until then.”

The door shuts behind him, and somehow Enjolras knows that he received the question he was expecting.


	5. You won't let me let you go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sky is a clear dark blue, transparent and helping them to breathe. In the dim light of the moon, the stars and the yellow lights of the city, they watch the sea of rooftops, attics and windows as they try to touch they sky, but they’re already doing it. Somewhere in the depth, they can see the Eiffel tower standing proud and imposing, visible from every rooftop, considerably new and absent from their dreams and memories. Silver bulbs start blinking and flashing from it, lightning the whole Paris sky. It is the light show time and it feels strange to be standing there right now, just the two of them.
> 
> “Tacky, isn’t it?” mutters Enjolras and feels Grantaire’s hand squeezing his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently wrote an one-shot about Enjolras having a panic attack, but this has been a particularly stressful week for me, therefore I wrote another scene for Grantaire. Please forgive me for that.  
> Feedback and opinions are more than welcome:)  
> The title of the chapter is again from the song 'The centre of attention' by the Jackson Waters.

He wishes he wouldn’t feel so bad for Courfeyrac. He really wishes he would be able to continue disapproving of him and feel annoyed. It’s just that he’s Courfeyrac, and Courfeyrac would never consciously hurt a fly. Let alone Jehan.

Courfeyrac fucked this up, Enjolras knows that and _he_ knows that. Enjolras would completely understand if Jehan never wanted to speak to Courfeyrac again. But then another, less radical part of his brain, tells him that the man has been punished enough already. Courfeyrac hasn’t fully grown up, he never actually did, and now he’s burning with shame and remorse and the deepest, most painful sorrow, and it simply is wrong because Courfeyrac must be loud and careless and laughing, but instead he’s curled on Combeferre’s lap, his knees drawn close to his body and his arms wrapped around them, his glance made of steel, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the shut television.

Enjolras also wishes he could comfort his best friend in some way, but the image of the caricature and Grantaire’s caption about his way with people will never leave his head, neither will the memory of a laughing Courfeyrac, holding hands with Jehan and being insufferably sweet together. He knows he’ll feel eternally guilty for rolling his eyes at them.

He takes a seat near his friends on the couch and his hands feel stiff, he doesn’t really know what to do with them, should he hug Courfeyrac? He doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with the idea, so his palm instead comes to rest on his friend’s waist. “Hey,” he mutters, “how’re you feeling?”

Apparently Courfeyrac is absolutely perfect with human contact, unlike him, but Enjolras guesses this is something he should have figured out through the years. The man leans closer to him, now between him and Combeferre, throwing an arm around Enjolras and burying his face on his shoulder with a small whimper. Enjolras finally knows he must pull him into a hug and, surprisingly, it’s easier than he’d thought. “It’s alright,” he murmurs nonsensically, “it’s going to be alright.”

Combeferre is stroking Courfeyrac’s unwashed curls in a soothing, steady rhythm. “Would you want me to help you into a shower later?” he asks softly.

“Don’t worry, I‘ll do it myself,” murmurs the man, forcing a small, thankful smile.

“You also need to eat.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Waffles?”

There is a small silence and Enjolras can feel Courfeyrac breathing heavily next to him. “Yes, please.” Thankfully Courfeyrac gets sad in a non-self-destructive way.

“Courf?” Combeferre’s tired, sympathetic look is even warmer than his voice. “I’m going to speak to Jehan. And you’ll have to, too.”

“He isn’t going to hear,” whimpers Courfeyrac. “I’ve ruined everything. I was a massive dickhead.”

“You were,” Combeferre’s tender voice lacks any poison. “But he is going to hear. Don’t underestimate him.”

“I can never forgive myself for hurting him,” God, this is heartbreaking. “He’s the most precious thing…”

“He is, but don’t blame yourself anymore. You’ve understood what you’ve done.”

“I have. And I’m sorry.” Courfeyrac raises his swollen eyes to look at the both of them. “He isn’t answering my texts, he’ll never pick up the phone.”

“We’ll speak to him,” murmurs Enjolras, “he needs his time.”

Combeferre nods in agreement. “And then you’re going to speak to him.”

There is another small silence and Courfeyrac cracks a small, hopeful smile that sends a pang of pain in Enjolras’ chest. “I’m going to speak to him.”

Combeferre grins proudly. “That’s my boy! Should I prepare your shower?”

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “I’m going, promise not to try to drown myself!”

Comebferre laughs half-heartedly as Courfeyrac climbs off the back of the couch and drags his body to the bathroom, wrapped in a comforter. Combeferre turns to stare at Enjolras and he suddenly looks like he’s aged ten years. Enjolras can say the same thing for himself, really. He always figured out that he was sick or excessively tired only when his work was finished in the past, when he finally collapsed on his bed in 4AM and passed out until his alarm would go off, or when Combeferre and Courfeyrac would force him to join them for a relaxed movie night and he’d finally realize how stiff his muscles were, and allow Combeferre to give him a massage. Now this hardly happens anymore. It’s hazy when it first started, but apparently Enjolras can hardly concentrate on his work in first place for him to say that he can rest afterwards. The last days –or weeks- have been lost in a blur of headaches he’s desperately trying to hide by replacing the missing painkiller boxes with new ones, and of constant, insufferably nausea and chills. Joly has felt his forehead numerous times and Combeferre can’t stop eyeing him suspiciously, but Enjolras has a very weird feeling that his state has more to do with those vivid, bloodied nightmares which he hardly even remembers in the morning.

“Do you think Jehan will change his mind?” he whispers to Combeferre, pulling his ankles under him on the couch.

His bespectacled friend shrugs before resting his arm on the back of the couch. “I hope so. I can’t say I’m not afraid, but I keep hope. Jehan is a total gem, and he’s been the best that ever could happen to our Courf. I’ll try to talk him round.”

Enjolras nods and turns his head away. He can feel Combeferre’s piercing glance on his skin, the one he only saves for him. “You’re not alright,” his friends mutters, subtlety eventually aside, and it’s more of a statement than a question.

Enjolras turns to look at him from the corner of his eye. “’m fine, just a little stressed with the protest,” he mutters even though his head is throbbing even more now than before.

“Will you have waffles with Courf?”

He shakes his head, which is immediately proven to be a very bad idea. “Not really hungry.” His stomach is empty yet he feels like he’s going to throw up all over the carpet if he swallows a bite of fried dough.

“I worry, you know,” mutters Combeferre, and it’s obvious in his voice that he does. “I was talking to you about the petition yesterday, you _know_ what petition, and I felt like you were hardly paying attention. Have you even slept for a total of eight hours throughout the last _three days_?”

“You always worry, ‘Ferre,” Enjolras finds himself thoroughly absorbed by wrapping a thread of the creamy cushion around his finger until he blocks circulation.

“I don’t,” Combeferre smiles softly, resting a hand on Enjolras’ shoulder, “that’s dear ol’ Joly’s job, and you know that very well. I haven’t seen you like that since high school senior year’s finals. Not even then…”

“I’ll go to bed early tonight, okay?” offers Enjolras. “And I promise not to work, I can watch a movie with you and Courf.” That is considerably huge progress for Enjolras, considering how much work has yet to be done and how much he always try to get away with watching Courfeyrac’s favorite Disney films, thus Combeferre seems mildly comforted.

“You know you can always talk to us… if there’s anything to talk about, I mean.”

Enjolras thinks a bit about it. What if… What if he tried to talk about it with Combeferre? He considers it for an instant. Combeferre always understood. But now? What is he going to tell him now? That he spends half of his time with his nails digging in the flesh of his palms and with his fingers tangled in his hair, pulling in order to disguise the pain with more pain? That he wakes up in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat that smells like blood, feeling like he’s dying over and over again, like his chest is going to explode violently? Or maybe that the pain only stops when he’s with Grantaire, when his fingers brush against his own, that the nightmares stop when he sleeps with the artist’s breath brushing against his nape? This isn’t normal, it never will be, Enjolras is going crazy and there’s nothing he can do about it, but he isn’t going to add the burden of worrying about the state of his mental health to Combeferre’s already busy mind.

No, Combeferre can’t know. He’s all alone in this, and all he has to do is survive.

Easy as breathing.

Except breathing is not really easy anymore

He squeezes Combeferre’s hand and cracks a small smile. “You have nothing to worry about. I’m alright.”

It’s when he’s left alone, a couple of hours later, after Courfeyrac returns to his place to pick some clean clothes and Combeferre goes to find Jehan, that it gets worse to the point that he can’t really breathe what with the dull pain that throbs beneath his ribs and the burning sensation that settles in his stomach. He abandons every effort of working on his assignment and instead curls in his bed, never lying down because he’s sure his insides will deceive him if he does and he really can’t deal with cleaning vomit off his sheets. He wraps his arms around his body protectively and tries hard to take deep breaths through his parted lips, only he fails at doing it slowly and soon he’s almost hyperventilating.

He doesn’t know how the hell this is going to help, but his shaky hand reaches for his cell phone on the drawer near his bed and soon he’s dialing the last contact he ever thought he’d need to save.

*

At first he thinks it’s cannons.

Then he realizes that cannons can’t explode in the rhythm of Stones’ _Paint it black_.

He almost wants to bury his head in a pillow and scream because he can’t answer to anybody right now, even if it’s Jehan calling and he needs something, or if Éponine has lost Gavroche again somewhere in the streets of Paris.

The phone doesn’t stop ringing so he groans and stretches his hand which is numb after lying with his whole weight on it for so long. He can’t even open his eyes in order to check the number, so his heart leaps in his chest when he recognizes Enjolras’ voice at the end of the line, and he thinks he’s hallucinating.

“Hey, R, can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you kid,” he’s afraid at the sound of his own voice and he immediately regrets it, expecting Enjolras to get epically pissed off and even hang up. Instead, he hears a hesitant sigh.

“Sorry I’m calling. Am I interrupting your work?”

He rolls on his back, rubbing his temple. His pulse has picked up at the sound of the man’s voice. “No, I’m not at the Montmartre today.”

“Why?” Enjolras asks suspiciously.

“Stayed inside,” he only mutters. “Wasn’t really feeling myself.”

“You said you’d come at the meeting but you didn’t attend that either.” The concern and softness in Enjolras’ voice is tangible and Grantaire thinks he’ll faint. “Are you sick?”

“Nah,” he dismisses, unable to believe that Enjolras actually noticed he didn’t attend the meeting yesterday. “I’m okay. Just…” he hurries to add, “you know, not okay _enough_ to have worked on the sketches, I’m sorry.” He shuts his eyes tightly, waiting for disapproving comments to come. Instead Enjolras tuts with his tongue.

“Don’t worry, just get better.” There is a pregnant silence. “Anyway, I didn’t call to ask about the pamphlets and the posters.”

“How may I help you then, o captain my captain?”

Another silence follows, and Grantaire is afraid that Enjolras might be able to hear the thump of his heart through the phone.

“I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Well, Grantaire is sure that even if Enjolras _wasn’t_ able to hear his heartbeat up to this point, he surely is now. He wants to shout, he wants to ask how, why, _are you fuckin shittin’ me? Have you hit your head on a cop’s fist? Have you been drinking something wicked which you should definitely share with me?_

But then he knows. _He knows._

“You too?” he hears himself breathing.

They don’t speak for a while. “Yes,” Enjolras mutters eventually, “me too.” The silences they share will eventually cause Grantaire to explode. “I really cannot understand.”

Grantaire thinks. He thinks of the recurring nightmares, he thinks of the feeling that he always knew Enjolras, he thinks of the paintings he took from Éponine’s to keep behind Bahorel’s couch, the paintings with a stunning God of light hanging of the top of a barricade, wrapped in nothing but a red flag, blood dripping through his red parted lips. He swallows with pain and he wishes that Enjolras can’t hear. “I know,” he says, “neither can I.”

“When am I going to see you?”

“Bahorel said the next meeting will be tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. Will you be there? If you’re feeling better, I mean.”

“Yes, I think I will.”

“Good,” says Enjolras hoarsely, “I want you to be there.”

When Grantaire hangs up, he’s sure he hasn’t stopped dreaming.

*

Grantaire had thought it would be a little awkward.

Well, he was wrong.

It is _impossibly_ awkward.

Courfeyrac is eyeing Jehan from the opposite corner of the Musain with a pained look which resembles that of a hungry puppy. Jehan does not let his glance fall on him, and is seemingly calm and collected, only Grantaire can feel him stiffen on his side every time that Courfeyrac speaks quietly, and his voice is shaking when it is his turn. At some point their eyes meet and Courfeyrac looks ready to cry, as for Jehan… well, let’s say that Grantaire’s flesh will never forget how sharp his nails really are.

The thing is that apparently there was a reason for him not to leave the apartment during the past few days. He realizes it’s too much when it already is late. He doesn’t think he can deal with Jehan and Courfeyrac this evening. He doesn’t think he can contribute to the meeting at all, he realizes that Feuilly is asking him for the sketches and he hasn’t even started on them, and Éponine isn’t here even though she’d started attending the meetings and he can’t even imagine where she’s hanging around again and whether she’s alright and then all the words are swirling in his mind, alcoholism, homelessness, art, job, _change,_ and he knows that nothing is normal anymore.

And then Enjolras appears through the door, a cool wave of air enters the room, he’s wrapped in a red coat _it could as well have been a flag_ his lips look crimson from the cold _it’s blood, it’s his blood_ and his blond curls are tousled from the wind _it’s a halo and they’re in heaven_ and Grantaire can’t breathe anymore, the walls are closing in and there isn’t enough air, his vision goes blurry and he’s suffocating, a voice pierces through his ear and rings in his head “R? Are you alright?” it’s Bossuet and then Courfeyrac is jumping off his seat and rushing towards him only he’s blurry and Cosette is saying something but he can’t hear and Marius is gaping in surprise, and then Feuilly and Bahorel and Musichetta… it’s too many of them and he can’t breathe, the air isn’t enough for them all, the collar of his hoodie is strangling him, his fingers are curled around his long hair and he’s pulling it off the ponytail but he can’t feel pain, he’s numb, he’s all numb, he can’t see him, Enjolras is nowhere to be seen but he needs to find him, where is he, _where is he,_ why is everything going black?

“Jesus fuck, what’s happening?”

“R, are you hurt?”

“Talk to us!”

And they’re coming closer and closer and he can’t he can’t breathe, but then there’s a voice, Joly’s. “He’s having a panic attack, step back, don’t you see you’re crowding him?”

_Yes, yes, panic attack._

_He was there only a moment ago, where is he now?_

_They’ve torn them down. They’ve ripped them apart._

“Grantaire? Can you hear me?”

_Together. They should have been together all along._

“It’s Combeferre. You’re having a panic attack but you’re going to be alright. We’ll help you.”

_They were together, for eternity, or for a second. Why aren’t they now?_

Warm hands are wrapping around his own, disentangling his fingers from his hair. He can’t say he can feel them. His muscles is numb, his skin is itchy.

_A part of him._

“I’m holding your hands, it’s okay, you’re going to be alright.”

_He’s not. He’s dying._

“You must try to breathe. You need to do this slowly.”

_He’s dying alone._

“You’re not alone, breathe. There is enough air.”

_Only there isn’t._

“Take a deep, slow breath.”

_They must die together. Otherwise he’s bound to live forever, and live alone._

“You’re doing good, Grantaire, you can do this. Just breathe.”

_He’s dying again and he’s died before, he knows that feeling of suffocation, of blood drowning off his body, of being trapped in pained flesh, only this time he’s alone._

_He shouldn’t be alone._

“Not so fast, Grantaire, you’re hyperventilating. Try to follow my breathing pattern.” Combeferre is taking deep, slow breaths which are so unsynchronized with his own, agonized frenzy of inhaling and never exhaling. Somehow it helps, but he can’t breathe, his chest is burning and his hands are shaking, he opens his eyes and the room is blurry around him, he can see Combeferre who is kneeled on the floor, holding his hands but he can’t focus on anyone else.

“Enj…” he hears himself croaking and he’s ashamed, God he’s so ashamed but he needs him, he knows that he needs him or else he’ll die, _he’ll die._

He can hear the deadly silence in the room interrupted by swishing and murmuring and the progress he had done is blown up in the air, he can’t breathe anymore, he hears Enjolras’ name but he can’t see him anywhere.

But then his hands are released and others, colder ones are wrapped around his own and he can feel him near him, his whole body fills with an inexplicable warmth that melts the cold sweat away, and another, shaky voice is heard: “I’m here, R. I’m not going anywhere. Just breathe with me.”

And he does, he does because it’s easy, and the air is enough, how had he not realized before? The air is obviously enough and he takes a breath together with Enjolras who is flushed and warm and _here,_ he’s not going anywhere, so Grantaire takes another breath and soon his vision becomes less and less blurry and he can see him, he’s beautiful, a shadow of a smile engraved on his face, Jehan and Combeferre kneeled on his right and left side.

When he’s breathing normally, waiting for his heartbeat to slow down, he can see them all standing around him, stunned and baffled and scared and relieved, only he can’t stare at their faces right now, he can’t stare at Combeferre’s encouraging smile and worse, Enjolras’ shocked expression. He’s ashamed, he’s a coward and cowards can’t deal with shame, or guilt, or care. He needs some air and it’s too much for him to take, so he gets up and walks past Bossuet and Musichetta and out of the café.

*

When Enjolras bursts out of the café, after Grantaire, Courfeyrac cries “Finally!” and Jehan roars “At fuckin’ last!”

The silence that falls is palpable and Combeferre with Feuilly are the first to walk outside as the meeting obviously cannot continue anymore, Cosette practically drags Marius and Bahorel, and Musichetta subtly takes Joly and Bossuet ‘to show them something behind the bar’.

Jehan looks absolutely shocked to be left alone and he desperately tries to follow Musichetta, seeming to be extremely interested in caramel lattes, but she has already locked the door with the sign STAFF behind her and her boys. 

His heart is an ugly cacophony in his ears as he tries to escape through the door, but Courfeyrac’s hand is already wrapped around his arm so tightly that it blocks circulation.

“Don’t give me the _we need to talk_ shit, because there’s nothing to talk about,” growls Jehan through his teeth.

“Well, I’m just about to give it to you, and there’s _plenty_ to talk about.” Courfeyrac forces the poet to turn and look at him. Jehan can’t help but notice how unusually serious Courfeyrac’s voice sounds. “Let me apologize to you. You need to believe that I’m sorry.”

Jehan’s voice bears no hatred, and one can’t even hear the disguised sorrow if he doesn’t know the man as much as Courfeyrac does. “I believe you,” he simply says, “I know you’re sorry, but this is not enough.”

“I’d thought you loved me,” cries Courfeyrac, and his fingers are gripping on Jehan tightly enough that the poet is unable to escape.

“I thought so too,” he mutters blankly.

Silence falls. “I will fight for you, Jehan,” Courfeyrac mutters eventually. “I love you.”

Jehan chuckles bitterly. “Of fuckin’ _course._ You _love_ me. Pray tell me, _how_ is that possible? _How_ do you love me?”

He hears Courfeyrac taking a deep breath behind him yet he doesn’t turn his head to face him. The words he hears coming out of the boy’s mouth cause him to freeze in his position. “How do I love thee?” Another deep, shaky breath. “Let me count the ways… I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise… I love thee with a love I seemed to lose, with my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”

Jehan slowly turns to face him. Courfeyrac seems flushed and breathless as if he has been running. The poet can feel his heart racing in his chest as he cackles. “Did you think that memorizing a poem will ever be enough?” He grits his teeth and Courfeyrac has never seen him look more terrifying. “Did you think that _loving_ me is enough? You never loved me, Courfeyrac. You’d never do such a thing if you loved me.”

“God,” Courfeyrac shuts his eyes in pain and runs his fingers through his hair, “I was the biggest fuckin’ fool, Jehan, a complete prick, but I’d never consciously hurt you, I’d never consciously let you feel bad! It was just a kiss, a drunken fuckin’ _kiss!_ I mean, you kiss our friends!”

“And do you think that’s the same thing? That I will take _any_ of your just-a-kisses? You can shove them up your ass!” hisses Jehan, his eyes narrowing dangerously.

He expects Courfeyrac to cry something and try to fight more, but instead he collapses on a chair, looking short of breath.

“You’re a flirt, I knew it,” Jehan shrugs his shoulders, “I knew you’d hurt me but I kept hoping and I ended up believing it, believing you’d be different. Turns out _I_ was the fool.”

“Don’t say that,” Courfeyrac’s voice is a faint whisper, tears are swelling in his eyes and Jehan finds him pathetic, he finds him pathetic but at the same time his chest is burning with the most painful fire. “I am lost without you.”

Jehan shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice a little softer, “but no matter how I feel, -how I felt-, I can’t go on living like this, in the agony of you drinking one night and fucking some girl, blowing some dude, I respect myself as much as I wish you’d respect me.”

Courfeyrac raises his head in defeat, his eyes puffy with ugly tears. “Fine,” he whispers, because he knows that if he speaks aloud, the breaking of his voice will be impossible to hide. “You are right. We both know that you are right and I’m not. You can choose to never speak to me again, I won’t try to stop you. But first, first you need to hear me. You need to know why I keep fuckin’ things up.”

“There is no need for you to explain,” snorts Jehan, turning around and starting to walk to the door, “you were drunk, that’s the excuse for…”

“I had a dream,” he hears Courfeyrac’s voice behind him, and he freezes in his place.

“I dreamt of you –of us. We weren’t together in my dream, we never had been. I was with everyone and you were with no one, yet we didn’t need anyone but each other. I was terrified, I woke up sweaty and cold and disgusting. It was real, it _felt_ real yet it had to be a dream, it _had to._ I couldn’t pretend to be laughing to anyone about it, not even you. I was confused, I spent hours shaking like a little puppy.”

Jehan himself is shaking violently now, his hands are, yet he doesn’t dare to turn around and face Courfeyrac. “What did you dream of?” he croaks.

“Of you. Of us. You were beautiful, so fuckin’ beautiful, so beautifully sad. Your hair was short, shorter than now,” he brings the side of his hand at the crook of his neck to point the length, “I joked and told you to ornate it with flowers because you loved flowers and it was beautiful. You told me that love doesn’t kill, yet we were about to kill and to be killed. I asked you why, you hummed something about the future, I never really understood.” Jehan shudders, despite the pleasant temperature of the café. Courfeyrac stands up. “I had a hat,” he mutters surely yet dreamily, “it was a nice, tall hat, I felt powerful in it. I had a cane, and you were wearing a waistcoat with some ridiculous pattern on it, the puffiest of sleeves and some medieval collar-cravat thing that was so mismatching…” he makes a step closer to him. “You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. There was the smell of blood and gunpowder in the air. I thought didn’t know the streets, except that I did. We were smoking in the corner of a café and it felt like a hint of sunlight before a storm. You rested your head on my shoulder and asked me ‘Do you think we’ll ever be happy?’ though you were smiling while you asked me, as if you already were happy in the most eerie, melancholic way. ‘Someday,’ I’d told you, ‘someday we’ll be happy.’”

“And then?” cries Jehan, grabbing Courfeyrac’s collar, as if his life depends on his narration. “What happened then?”

Courfeyrac lets an ugly, almost hysterical sob. “Then they took you.” Simple as that.

They have completely forgotten about Musichetta, Joly and Bossuet’s presence in the next room. They stand in silence, staring at each other, sharing something they can’t really put into words –who can?- and Jehan ignores the surprise that replaces defeat in Courfeyrac’s face. His hands come to cup his neck. It’s warm and damp, like the kiss they share. “Today,” he mutters against his lips and he feels Courfeyrac melting in his arms. “We can be happy today.”

*

Outside the Musain, near an alley full of garbage bins where the supply door is, much to Musichetta’s dismay, one can find a white iron round staircase that leads to the rooftop of the café. Enjolras can recall numerous evenings they have spent there when Courfeyrac first discovered it, before that day at the Montmartre, laughing and planning and singing for a better future, pissing all the neighbors out of their minds. He can recall only one evening after his portrait was done, with Grantaire present that time, pissed drunk and rambling deliriously about Greek Mythology. Enjolras had always hated Grantaire for the fact that he called him Apollo when his knowledge on Mythology was better than all of Les Amis’ put together, which meant that he was definitely aware of Apollo’s horrible behavior towards people. It took some time for Enjolras to realize that Grantaire was only using that nickname to piss him off, and then he started hating himself for achieving to become so gravely disdained by the man who hadn’t left his thoughts and dreams for the past few months.

Darkness has fallen outside, it’s a pleasantly cold evening of early spring, the chill is still crisp and piercing through the layers of his clothes, but he can only be thankful at the way it seems to be clearing his mind. Somehow he knows Grantaire will be up there. He doesn’t even know how he climbs all of the swirling stairs, but soon he finds himself on the top and the cool air slaps his face and ears beneath his grey beret. Grantaire is standing with his back turned near the edge of the short, peeling wall that keeps them from falling down, his loose long, wild curls blowing in the wind. He’s only wearing his green hoodie and Enjolras’ heart catches on his throat. If he didn’t have to make sure that the man wouldn’t feel dizzy and trip, or catch pneumonia, he would stand there and watch him forever, lit by the lights of the city above their feet.

He makes a few careful steps closer and gently wraps the parka jacket around Grantaire’s stiff shoulders. Grantaire doesn’t even turn to look at him, so Enjolras puts the maroon beanie in the man’s gloveless hand. He remembers the first time he noticed it, wrapped around a pencil, callused and wounded by the cold. Their fingers brush and he feels them frozen.

“It’s cold, you should wear this,” he mutters. Grantaire obeys and adjusts the beanie on his head with a blank expression, still staring at the city that spreads before them as his arms drop again on his sides.

“What you must be thinking of me,” he says hoarsely.

Enjolras clears his throat, his gaze following Grantaire’s, and they both end up looking ahead. “I’m thinking that there’s so much I don’t know about you. Be careful up here,” he instructs softly, “you’ve just had a panic attack.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal yet,” cackles Grantaire bitterly, and Enjolras curses himself for speaking without thinking enough first.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. I know what you’re going through.”

Grantaire leaves a small snort but Enjolras turns his head to him sharply. “I _do._ ”

The dark haired man slowly turns to face him and he can’t hide a mildly shocked expression. “What the fuck is going on, R?” Enjolras demands.

Grantaire smirks sarcastically. “You said you knew _mon ange_ , didn’t you?”

Enjolras opens his mouth to respond but shuts it again, and soon forms a small smile. “You really are impossible.”

“You should have figured that out by now, kid.”

“Don’t worry, I did from the moment I first saw you,” he grimaces. “All that I know,” he continues, “all that I know is that the pain stops when we’re… together.”

“A golden prize and a tricolor cookie for excellent observational skills,” Grantaire means to sound sarcastic but he can’t hide the tremor from his voice. “I don’t care about myself. I was a mess already,” he turns to face Enjolras, and in the blue light of the night sky the blonde can notice the dark circles underneath his red rimmed eyes, “but I don’t want you to ache.”

Enjolras doesn’t know what to reply to this, so he turns again to face the city. Their eyes don’t meet but their hands do. It’s hesitant at first, a brush of their frozen knuckles in the small distance between their coats, then Enjolras’ fingers surely wrap around Grantaire’s and the spaces between them fit perfectly. Their hands clasp tightly, holding each other on the top of Paris, different from the city they first met, but somehow the same as well. The same glory, the same ghosts, the same sun rising above them and the same cobblestone beneath their feet. They remember of another café, of another rooftop, of a sunny June morning that smelt of gunpowder, wine and youth. “I feel like I’m going completely crazy,” he murmurs eventually, “it all feels so real…”

The sky is a clear dark blue, transparent and helping them to breathe. In the dim light of the moon, the stars and the yellow lights of the city, they watch the sea of rooftops, attics and windows as they try to touch they sky, but they’re already doing it. Somewhere in the depth, they can see the Eiffel tower standing proud and imposing, visible from every rooftop, considerably new and absent from their dreams and memories. Silver bulbs start blinking and flashing from it, lightning the whole Paris sky. It is the light show time and it feels strange to be standing there right now, just the two of them.

“Tacky, isn’t it?” mutters Enjolras and feels Grantaire’s hand squeezing his own.

“Ridiculously much,” whispers the man, before slowly turning his head to face him. They are just a breath away from each other and they swallow the same clouds of cold smoke released between them.

“Do you permit it?” he mutters hoarsely, and it’s wrong and stupid and ridiculous, nothing that Grantaire would ever say in his everyday conversations, but they both know he has to, because it’s more right than wrong and it’s not odd anymore.

Enjolras nods slowly, and shuts his eyes before feeling Grantaire’s cold palm cupping his cheek, his skin raw and harsh, his touch featherweight. He feels his knuckles tracing across his cheekbone, his fingertips stroking a shut eyelid, an eyebrow, the heel of his hand brushing against his chin before his thumb comes to rest between his lips. Everything is clear, like a cloudless Paris sky. Everything is soft and warm, his insides are filled with the most serene tranquility and he exhales deeply. When he opens his eyes to meet Grantaire’s blue ones, he thinks he might be imagining it.

A faint, white light shines between them in the dead of the night.


	6. And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is that it, love?” he hears himself breathing, desperately needing to believe. “Is love the pain?”
> 
> Enjolras nods slowly and takes his hand in his own with a small smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, this took me so long... I really hope it's not ridiculous. I've already started the next chapter which will be the porn... What can you do, I'm vicious.  
> Lyrics again from the song 'Bastille' by Pompeii.

It should be easy. It should already have been solved. They know what they need even though they don’t know why but it _isn’t_ that easy.

Or at least it isn’t that easy _for Grantaire._

Enjolras spends two days calling and texting him. It isn’t that he doesn’t reply, he does. But when he does, he’s either at work or busy painting for requests that Enjolras wishes he would believe were true but somehow he can’t.

Grantaire has prepared a few ironic yet educative sketches though, about the rights of the LGBTQA community. Enjolras hates himself for the fact that he didn’t almost believe his eyes when Bahorel brought them to him, saying with a wink that they were ‘the coolest fuckin’ stuff he’d ever fuckin’ seen’. When he asked him why Grantaire hadn’t come himself, it was Éponine who replied in a rather sharp, almost accusing tone and claimed that the man wasn’t feeling entirely himself that evening. His heart leapt and his pulse didn’t become entirely even throughout the rest of the meeting. He allowed Combeferre and Courfeyrac to take over most of the planning of the upcoming protest and sat rather silent until the first break of the meeting, when he burst out of the café with his phone in his hand.

**[From: Enjolras, 6:02 AM] I wanted to thank you for the sketches. I’m extremely impressed.**

His phone soon buzzes and he almost jumps up, trying to ignore Feuilly’s suspicious looks, who’s come outside to have a smoke.

**[From: Grantaire, 6:04 AM] why thank, kid. always tht tone of surprise…**

Enjolras snorts, not knowing whether his disapproval is addressed to Grantaire’s sarcasm or pet name, or to the manner his own pulse picks up and the downright ridiculous smile that inevitably appears on his face.

**[From: Enjolras, 6:05 AM] Éponine said you weren’t feeling well.  Is it happening again? Should I come over after the meeting?**

It takes a while for Enjolras to receive a reply, and he almost beg Combeferre to make the break last a little longer. However he still does check his phone while Bossuet is loudly brainstorming, and he feels an unexpected tightness in his stomach at what he receives.

**[From: Grantaire, 6:11 AM] not tht**

**[6:12 AM] its a cold or sth**

**[From: Enjolras, 6:13 AM] Feel better then.**

**[6:13 AM] Joly says rest and plenty of fluids.**

**[From: Grantaire, 6:14 AM] d think i’d crumble?**

**[6:14 AM] d think i’d lay down and die?**

**[6:14 AM] oh no not I**

**[6:14 AM] I WILL SURVIVE**

Enjolras can’t hold back a smile even though a tiny voice insides him suggests that maybe, just _maybe_ Grantaire is drunk and lying through his teeth right now.

He has to shove his phone in his pocket when an excited Courfeyrac screams that E AND R ARE SITTING ON A TREE, S-E-X-T-I-N-G!

The meeting finishes and the others head to the Corinthe for an aftermath. Enjolras doesn’t really feel like it. He breathlessly takes the decision to visit Grantaire, he knows it might not be the wisest idea but his head hurts and his muscles itch and he knows he’ll feel better, he just knows, even though he’ll never admit how he’s missed him.

The metro is rather crowded this time of the evening, and the worst of all is surely the drunks, heading to some bar, already wasted, loud and annoying. Enjolras does his best to turn his face away, though focusing on Plato or the protest is particularly hard. At least his head makes it as much.

He can be nothing but thankful when he hears the name of Jehan and Bahorel’s neighborhood and he follows the crowd outside the station. A faint smile is leading his way, only to vanish from his face when he almost stumbles on a body in an alley near their building.

A horrible, tight lump settles on his throat and inexplicable, burning pain spreads through his whole body when he sees Grantaire, passed out before his feet, near a few garbage bins. A cat screeches as Enjolras falls on his knees, checking Grantaire’s pulse and shouting his name.

The man only stirs and lets a small, groggy whimper. He’s passed out drunk, Enjolras realizes with exasperation, and his heart catches on his throat when he sees the bruises on his face and collarbone, and the open, bleeding wound on his forehead. His long hair has gone loose from the ponytail and is sticking on his clammy face and neck, and his breathing is labored and reeks of whiskey.

Enjolras is touching him but he’s still aching and he feels terrified because what is he going to do now, what if the pain never goes away? And Grantaire is hurt and bleeding and that’s too much for him to bear, he remembers the tender touch on his face, the bright blue eyes fixed on his own, the gentle quietness that seemed so new and different… he’d been fooled. It’s the same Grantaire he’d met, he’s sure there will be the same snarky expression on his eyes when he opens them, always the same, he got into a fight without caring for Enjolras, without caring for anything.

But for now, all Enjolras cares about is helping him. And all he knows is that Grantaire’s keys are nowhere to be found. He doesn’t even know how he calls for a taxi and helps the man in, or when they end up in his own place and how he manages to drag him upstairs and carry him in his bed, especially when the man is not as bony as he was when Jehan took him in from the streets. He’s calling Joly with his heart pounding against his ribs but his friend does not pick up, neither does Combeferre after him. He is very well aware of the volume of the music in the Corinthe; he always used to complain for it and now his friends cannot even hear their phones.

He heaves a deep sigh and tries to concentrate on what he can do on his own. Maybe Éponine could help but no matter how embarrassing a realization that really is, he can’t handle someone trying to take Grantaire away from him, just not yet.

He helps him out of his boots and rushes to the bathroom, browsing in the medicine cabinet. Grantaire looks pale but his pulse seems steady and strong and Enjolras feels relieved when the man lets out a snore. He’s only sleeping, pissed drunk, with no other selfish purpose than scaring the fuck out of him. He grumpily decides that he doesn’t give a fuck about the ugly bruises, Grantaire deserves them either for drinking so much that he happened to stumble on every wall and bin, or for taking up fights with guys three times his size, which is the most likely. However the drying wound on his forehead makes his insides clench uncomfortably and he proceeds in cleaning it with gentle movements the way he’s seen Joly do to Bahorel several times in the past, feeling his skin burning beneath his fingers. He really fears for a concussion but thankfully Combeferre will be back from the bar soon, hopefully sober, and Enjolras knows that Grantaire will be more than safe then.

Despite his overall upset state, his heart cracks a little when he looks at his sleeping form again while pressing the damp rag on his forehead, and most of his anger steadily melts. Grantaire keeps surprising him both positively and negatively again and again and he feels terribly confused and desperately wishes that Combeferre would be here and that he could talk to him about it, about everything, really. He can’t help himself from tracing his knuckles softly over the man’s bruised cheekbone, before leaning closer and brushing his lips against his forehead.

He feels Grantaire stirring and his heart skips a beat. He quickly pulls away, kicking his Converse off before raising his legs on the bed, and it isn’t long before the man cracks a bleary eye open and gives him a small smile.

“Shit, I’m blinded,” he groans groggily, squirming and covering his vision with the back of his hand. “It can only be unsanitary to have the fuckin’ God of light and sparkly hair as my alarm clock!”

“Well, sorry I didn’t leave you in some godforsaken alley to choke in your own vomit,” snorts Enjolras, trying not to meet his eye.

Grantaire chuckles hoarsely. “If I start counting the times you’ve told me I’m positively sure you’ll get a golden prize for unoriginality.”

“You said you had a cold,” says Enjolras coldly, “instead you just stink of alcohol.”

“Cognac does wonders for one’s congestion,” he winks blearily and Enjolras huffs. “I get drunk, baby, that’s what I do,” he shrugs, sitting up with a grimace of pain. “Shouldn’t surprise you by now. Thank you for being my savior and the like.”

“Did you get into a fight?”

“He was asking for it.”

“One day we’ll find you killed.”

“’t’s okay. It’ll stop these fuckin’ migraines. The world won’t miss much.”

“You’re a mess,” murmurs Enjolras, leaning closer and narrowing his eyes.

Grantaire nods which obviously appears to be a very bad idea. “So they say.”

“You know what to do to stop the migraines,” breathes Enjolras and he can’t hold himself anymore.

“Please,” Grantaire’s voice is suddenly serious and pained, as if he’s just realized they’re making a mistake, the same mistake they have been making all along, “don’t do this. You know you mustn’t.”

“I don’t see a reason for this, we’ve waited for so long,” Enjolras has leant so close that he can feel Grantaire’s ragged, warm breath on his face and he can sense the unevenness in his own breathing.

“Don’t,” Grantaire almost whimpers, and before Enjolras can remember how to breathe, the man has thrown himself up with inexplicable reflexes for having had the shit beaten out of him and, limping on one foot, he bursts out of the door.

In the meanwhile, Enjolras has only managed to stand up and the door that has just slammed before him hits him like a punch in the guts.

*

Enjolras is waiting after having rung the bell several times, tapping his foot on the floor impatiently. He hears steps from the inside which are not fast _enough_ and he wants to shout that there’s no time to be lost, but finally the door opens and a sleepy Éponine appears, her dark hair pulled to a messy bun on the top of her head, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a button up shirt which is huge on her and Enjolras clearly doesn’t want to know what she has been doing and with whom right now.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea…” she mutters but he stops her.

“Grantaire isn’t here, is he?”

She remains silent for a while and Enjolras can hear more sounds from the inside of the apartment. Eventually, Éponine lets a sigh and steps aside letting him in. He enters the apartment without really caring what sort of strange guys in various states of undress he might find in there.

“He had a cold last night, didn’t he? Joly told me.”

“He never had a cold in first place. He was drunk. I found him in some alley near their place, passed out and beaten up.”

Éponine’s reaction is considerably quiet as she runs her hands over her face and heaves a deep sigh. “Shit…”

“I can’t find him anywhere now, Jehan called me and said he wasn’t at their place. I’d thought he might be here.”

“No, Enjolras,” she says hoarsely. “He isn’t here.”

Before she hasn’t even managed to finish her sentence a man appears in the doorway, barefoot and shirtless, wearing only his pants and glasses. His sandy brown hair is tousled and his throat traced with purplish love marks. He looks positively shocked and Enjolras can’t really blame him. He isn’t feeling far from that himself.

“YOU?” he hears himself asking in surprise. “That’s why you didn’t come home tonight?” His eyes shift to Éponine who is sharing a meaningful look with Combeferre, and suddenly he knows whose the blue shirt around her small figure is. “But… how?”

Combeferre shrugs his shoulders almost apologetically, making his way to the couch and taking a seat near Éponine. “Yesterday night, after the Corinthe…”

Enjolras holds up a hand, shuddering. “You know what? I don’t really wanna know.”

Éponine and Combeferre exchange another glance before Combeferre leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and Enjolras has to try very hard to avoid eye contact with his childhood friend’s marked skin. “Right, I’m sorry,” the man says calmly, “now, what is wrong? I heard something about Grantaire?”

Enjolras takes a deep, tired breath. “I found him in an alley, took him home because he didn’t have his keys. He left and he’s nowhere to be found.”

“Have you tried calling him?” asks Combeferre and Enjolras glares at him.

“The question is,” Éponine’s eyes narrow. “Why did he leave?”

  _Because the fact that we share some sort of previous lives, you know, regular stuff, freaked the fuck out of him. Because he feels like I do, like his own body is eating him from inside out and he can’t deal with it, so he drinks. Because he constantly has those nightmares from which he wakes up feeling like he’s just been shot on the chest._

“I don’t know.”

*

“Didn’t he say where he was going?”

Bahorel shakes his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Enjolras. I’m so sorry, we should have kept a better eye on him.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not your fault he left.”

“He didn’t say a word. He packed his things and left while Jehan was at Courfeyrac’s. I didn’t come home for the night either.”

“Has he been answering to any of your calls?”

“No. No, he hasn’t.” Bahorel looks slightly worried as he pours some whiskey in a glass and Enjolras mechanically accepts it. “It always seemed to me like he had a hard time accepting living with us without paying. He was very ashamed when we found out he was homeless.” They remain silent for a while and Enjolras sips half of his drink. His throat burns and he coughs. “Easy with that, dude,” murmurs Bahorel, leaning forward to pat his back, almost bending him on his knees. “Don’t worry, chief. R knows his way around.”

Enjolras nods without really realizing it. “Has he taken everything with him?”

“Yeah. Apart from his canvases, of course. Jehan has been keeping them in the study.”

“May I see them?”

Bahorel becomes silent. “I’m not sure, buddy. He may want to keep those to himself. I mean, I’ve never laid an eye upon them and I live here. One should know better than piss someone as dangerous as Jehan can get.” The huge man shudders. Noticing Enjolras expression, he gradually relaxes. “Well, I guess you have a reason to be asking.” He gestures to the direction of the corridor. “Give me a shout if you find any nudes!”

Enjolras would have realized that his hands are shaking slightly if he wasn’t focused on the loud cacophony that was his heartbeat in his head as he made his way into the study, full of poetry and law books and papers scattered all around. The canvases aren’t hard to locate in the small room. They lay against the bookcase, facing away from anyone that enters through the door, but it is a deep red curtain with golden embroidery, covering a painting that’s hanging on the door that draws his attention. He makes a step forward and his fingertips touch the rotten velvet that seems like a remainder of a previous era.

_Months have passed since that day at the hill of Montmartre. Or centuries. He doesn’t know. But now he can touch it. It’s so quite new a thing, such a bizarre sensation. He can touch it and despite the painful mayhem in his head, when his trembling knuckles brush against the raw dried paint on the canvas, everything becomes clearer at the same time more unbelievable, and he doesn’t know why, he never drinks, he isn’t hallucinating, this is happening, he is touching them, he’s touching them on canvas, and it’s like they’re touching, marble skin on paint stained skin, breath against breath, whiskey and coffee and cigarettes. Every fiber of his being is throbbing with his pulse and yes, yes it is like the painting is throbbing itself, it’s like his heart has been torn out of his chest and moved behind a thin layer of canvas, to meet another heart, and they beat like one, but how, how can such things happen? He can’t believe it._

_He can’t._

_Only he’s seeing it before his very eyes._

_It’s so different from every other painting he’s seen. It is bursting out of red flames and black smoke –or they are-, they’re in fire and it’s real, so real, he can almost smell the gunpowder while touching it, he can distantly hear the cannons, his fingers are burning. Beneath the flames, two hands that belong to two different men –or to the same?- clasp tightly like they had been parted long ago and now find each other, or like they had never been apart from the Genesis of the world. Two bodies are pressed together in a damned way and nothing seems able to get between their bare torsos, the curves of their backs and the four entangled limbs, nothing, apart maybe from sin and virtue. They are hatred and love, heaven and hell, they are red and black and white and gold, and explosion of colors, a revolution of brushes yet they seem real, so real…_

_They are together, are they not? They are never parted, they were born like that, two faces, light and dark, unable to exist without one another -they should have been._

_Yet they aren’t and it hurts, they exist and they exist alone. It hurts like a million bullets on their chests but he pulls back and covers the painting again with the red curtain with the gold embroidery._

*

His head is resting against the window pane of the metro and he can see his transparent reflection on the plastic because there really isn’t anything else to look at. It’s dark outside as the wagon moves and causes his whole body to vibrate on the seat. Even when they reach a station and light returns, there really isn’t anything else to look at apart from the homeless people sleeping on rotten blankets, with nothing but a scruffy parka and a layer of patched dignity to protect them from the early spring chill. Enjolras had never taken his eyes from the people, he had never looked away, he’d always faced inequality and oppression straight ahead, or so he thought.

Or so he thought…

He can’t do it now. He can’t stare at their raw faces and their faded clothes, the beanies and berets they use to keep away the cold and will keep using in June and July despite the heat. Suddenly he feels helpless, incapable of changing things, of _saving_ them when he doesn’t even know if they want to be saved even though he doesn’t know how to do that even if they wanted.

For once Enjolras doesn’t know his next step. He knows he can’t save everybody, and with shame burning in his chest, he looks away.

The moving stairs at the Abbesses station never seem to end and he moves without really walking, yet his mind feels number than his body.

The day is one of the first sunny ones and Montmartre is full with tourists who stroll quickly through the souvenir shops in the Rue Steinkerque, buying posters of the Chat Noir and pink notepads with the Eiffel tower. He can’t really blame them, can he? They’re laughing, smiling, holding cameras and hands. He wishes he wouldn’t be able to think for a while. For once, he just wants to laugh and smile and live in his own naïve utopia that had always been laughed at by Grantaire, he needs a hand to hold but he only has his own, two identical, pale hands that belong to the same person, rubbing each other at the absence of gloves because the weather might be sunny but this is Paris and his pockets are not enough to heat his skin just yet.

He finds himself at the Place du Tertre and his heartbeat picks up when he sees the first artists who sell their paintings or do collages to merrily converse with tourists or quietly standing near their work, with reserved and slightly bored smiles on their faces. He walks through the crowd. A few stray sunrays peeking beneath the puffy, white clouds bathe him in golden light. His hair seems to be radiating it in the whole square, his pale skin is almost transparent, his rosy cheeks and lips signs of a passionate life that seems to distant to him now. Parisian girls are drooling as they pass by, boys fix their eyes upon him with almost angsty confusion because Adonis himself is walking in the Mecca of the bohemian world, unaware of all the eyes upon him, of the buzzing of the crowd around him, their careless smile and their steps on the ancient cobblestone.

When he reaches the corner of the Place, the portraitists start noticing him. The headache has been there all along and he hardly realizes anymore because he has almost learnt to live with it, but now the sharp, throbbing sensation becomes more and more painful and he shuts his eyes, trying to shield himself from their voices and touches. He stops at the familiar spot and his heart almost bursts out of his chest, but when he opens his eyes another artist has occupied the place, a woman around fifty and Grantaire is nowhere to be seen, and suddenly the history Montmartre carries on Her shoulders feels too heavy on Enjolras’ own and he’s dizzy and nauseous and aching, but he never stops looking around with the faint hope he’ll see him somewhere, the same icy blue eyes and sarcastic crooked smile but nowhere, he’s nowhere.

He quickly bursts out of the crowd and finds himself in some picturesque, empty street with cobblestone lit by the sun, lilacs and bougainvillea splashing the open, wooden windows with color. A faint melody of accordion can be heard from a distance: a street musician, and the trees which are blowing gently in the wind help him breathe a little. He sits on the steps of a house and hugs his knees, taking one deep breath after the other and soon the feeling of nausea diminishes and he only has to deal with the headache and the pain in his muscles. An old Parisian lady stops and bends lower. “You alright, dear?” she asks with concern and he nods with difficulty, feeling more ashamed than ever in his life.

Where is Grantaire? What if he’s hurt? What if he’s cold? What if no one cares to ask him whether he’s alright?

He should probably eat something. There are many little bistros around here. Something is stretching uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. He gets up and drags his feet a couple of streets away. In a bistro enters a little child with a backpack on his bag, unwashed for weeks. He stops and stares as the owner smiles to him as if they’re acquainted and gives him a wrapped, hot tray. The gamin makes a grateful gesture and walks out, his face lit as if Christmas has come a couple of months earlier, humming a tune through crooked, gapped teeth.

Enjolras is not hungry anymore. He subconsciously clutches a hand over his aching chest as if he’s going to find another hand there that belongs to someone else yet to him at the same time, and starts walking back to the metro station.

*

He wakes up and everything is muted.

He’s covered in cold sweat, his t-shirt and hair damp and sticking on his skin. The room is spinning around him. He knows he’s screaming but he can’t hear his own voice. It’s muted, and Combeferre didn’t rush in his bedroom this time.

He just died, once again only he’s breathing. He knows he is but he can’t hear his own greedy inhales. All he can hear is the dull, loud thumping of his heart echoing in his head, trapped in his very dead body like he is trapped in the four empty, creamy walls of his room.

He just died again, and all he can hear is his blood still pounding in his frozen veins, as if forgotten there, a glitch, the same blood he spilt to the name of the people, only to die alone.

All he can hear is his heartbeat yet it’s only half of it. His heart is pounding madly in his chest yet half of it is missing. Another heart should be pounding near his own yet he’s alone and half in his soaked bed.

He has died before, only this time he died alone. A half of him was dreadfully asleep and never woke up to hold his own hand. He died half, unwhole. No one woke up to follow him. An Orestes cruelly split from his Pylades, an Achilles spared from his beloved Patroclus, a savage Antinous standing on the tomb of liberty alone, offering his breast. Beheaded. Guillotined. Shot. One time. Then eight.

He showers. He can’t hear the water pouring with force on his sore muscles yet there _is_ something he can finally hear: a dull buzzing on the back of his head and beneath his meninges. He sips his coffee. Combeferre talks to him. He nods even though it’s an incoherent buzzing in his head.

The morning of the protest is here.

*

The crowd is enormous. Enjolras is overwhelmed at the seas of people who’ve risen to protest in favor of marriage equality and against the anti-gay legislation in Russia, shouting and raising their fists for their right to love and be recognized. He can hear them, it is the voice of the people who are rising, he is in the middle of thousands of people, of the hugest crowd, yet for once he feels alone.

He turns around to look at his friends, the colors of passion and the air of conviction illuminating their faces.

And then he notices something he hadn’t spotted before.

Grantaire’s sketches. They’re everywhere, caustic and ironic and Enjolras can almost hear the slogans that accompany them in his hoarse sarcastic voice. “Would you rather I marry your daughter?” stretched upon Courfeyrac’s firm chest, on the tightest t-shirt in the universe. Jehan is dressed in the colors of the rainbow and Bossuet is wearing a t-shirt with one of Grantaire’s most minimalistic sketches, writing “I’m with stupid”, and his job is to follow everyone who breaks in the protest with a sign that says “Homosexuality is sin. Christ can set you free.” Combeferre and Éponine are looking particularly aggressive as they hold up an excellently painted sign writing “Dumbledore would be ashamed”. Bahorel’s sign had obviously been one of Grantaire’s favorites, since he seems to have invested a lot of time into it, and is nothing but the cliché “I can’t believe we still have to protest this crap”, while straight as fuck Cosette and Marius are wearing t-shirts with “I don’t mind if you’re straight, just don’t flaunt it in public” and “When are you going to tell your parents that you’re straight?” accordingly.

Enjolras turns to the front again and continues marching, his fist raised up high, shouting and singing.

He has been through many protests, some of them peaceful and others not at all. He has ended up in hospital or in the police department, shouting and fighting cops until the very moment that Combeferre would come to bail him out.

Soon the police are meddling with the crowd, so are homophobes, crying hysterical messages of hate. Jehan is already punching a cop and Joly pulls Bossuet to a hasty kiss and people start shouting insults. Bahorel starts fighting with two men at once and Éponine growls behind a split lip. Enjolras doesn’t know how or when, all he knows is that everything is a haze, he has been through this before but never so irrational, never so angry. His head is ready to explode, they have to do something quickly or else all their plans will go to hell. He can’t let them have it their way. He can’t think properly anymore.

He’s shouting to the top of his lungs, not really hearing himself. The first punch finds him unusually unprepared. “ _He’s their leader!_ ” people are growling. He punches back, knowing not who it is. A cop, as it turns out later. Then another. Somewhere he notices Combeferre’s worried glance towards him as he’s trying to disentangle Éponine from another cop’s grip but Enjolras doesn’t care. He keeps fighting, his teeth gritted and his fists clenched, landing everywhere and nowhere. The world seems to be slowing down, more and more, it’s all in slow motion, he’s being punched and kicked and he does the same because this is fuckin’ war, a war of ideas. He can feel the metallic taste of blood in his mouth.

Then he sees him. Hair long and dark, waving in the air, eyes of the bluest skies, hollow and darkened, half parted lips, frozen and breathless.

He’s not alone anymore.

And the world stops.

*

 

He’s more stunning than ever, a savage Antinous standing in the middle of the crowd or atop of it, no one can really tell because no one can really see the crowd, not when the light he’s radiating pales everything.

He’s struggling beneath bloody grips. His blue eyes meet with those dark, passionate ones. There is a breath. Then another. There is blood on his face and Grantaire can feel as if blood is blinding himself. They know that blood, they’ve seen it before, they’ve tasted it before. The world has stopped and they don’t know whether this is a beginning or an end because they’ve been searching for each other forever, again and again, yet here they are, motionless and still, breathlessly begging to feel whole. It hurts so much, it hurts more than ever and next moment they’re somehow next to each other, in the middle of the crowd.

“Is that it, love?” he hears himself breathing, desperately needing to believe. “Is love the pain?”

Enjolras nods slowly and takes his hand in his own with a small smile.

The deepest warmth fills their bodies as if Sun has descended to Earth and embraced them both, and next thing they know the world explodes in their chests, their lips are pressed together but it isn’t passionate or soft or full with longing, it is desperate and savage, teeth clashing and tongues struggling together, and it tastes of blood and gunpowder. Everything around them is a serious of explosions, the crowd, the cops, the homophobic cries, the shouts of their friends, yet for them it’s only a vast explosion of light and warmth and hearts that had waited for so long, trapped in those chests, now entwining and pounding together in the very rhythm of freedom.

They fight in that kiss for long, with each other and with themselves and with things they don’t need to fight anymore. The cries and insults around them soon turn into cheers. They can feel the metal of the handcuffs wrapped around their wrists yet they never break apart because they’re shoving themselves back together and they’ll never forget.

Never again.

[Last time I saw you  
We had just split in two.  
You were looking at me.  
I was looking at you.  
You had a way so familiar,  
But I could not recognize,  
Cause you had blood on your face;  
I had blood in my eyes.  
But I could swear by your expression  
That the pain down in your soul  
Was the same as the one down in mine.   
That's the pain,  
Cuts a straight line  
Down through the heart;  
We called it love.]

_The origin of love, Hedwig and the angry inch_


	7. Trying to shove ourselves back together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun rises behind the rooftops and the Eiffel tower, in the pink sky and the city starts waking beneath them. The day is young and will soon grow old, but will be reborn again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Smut. Explicit and badly written. Please don't read if you are not comfortable with it.  
> So here is the end of the story. I'm not sure whether I'm entirely satisfied with it and I'd really like to hear your opinions so that I can improve myself :) Thank you so much for reading and for keeping up with it all this time!  
> The title of the chapter is from the song that inspired the whole story,
> 
>  
> 
> [The origin of love ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scdql4LNe48)
> 
>  
> 
> from Hedwig and the angry inch. If you haven't listened to it already PLEASE PLEASE do because it will fill you with endless E/R feels.

They’re sitting patiently on a bench at the police department, fingers entwined, replying to questions with mere sarcasm. An exhausted Combeferre manages to take them out a few hours later. Nobody else has gotten severely injured, only a few cuts and bruises here and there, Bahorel, Jehan and Feuilly having to deal with no more than bruised knuckles and Joly’s taking care of Bossuet’s sprained wrist.

Combeferre and Joly look them both over and clean their wounds. Everybody is gathered around the TV in Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta’s but Enjolras has never in his life needed a shower and some rest more.

“You can’t go home all alone,” Combeferre frowns. “I don’t think you’ve earned yourself a concussion but…”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “I’m not a baby.”

“Of course you are,” hums Grantaire, staring innocently at the ceiling and he leaves a pained moan when he receives a light punch on his already bruised ribs.

“I can come with you if you’re tired.”

“No, you stay here and keep note about what the media says, and the people’s reaction,” frowns Enjolras. “Grantaire can come with me, he needs rest too.”

Combeferre’s warm, chocolate eyes turn to Grantaire and the three of them share a silence that does not need to be explained. “I will drive you home.”

*

They slowly step into the bathtub, settling one leg after the other. Enjolras can feel Grantaire’s blue eyes piercing through his skin, resting on his body and then immediately jerking away, as if he hasn’t been permitted to stare at him, as if they didn’t mutually decide in a silent manner to take their bath together in order to take care that no one passes out with a concussion or something like that.

A small, rational part of Enjolras’ mind knows that this is absolutely crazy. It’s _Grantaire._ Grantaire with whom he’s always fought, Grantaire who inexplicably managed to take over his mind, Grantaire who ran away. Yet at the same time it feels like the most rational and _right_ thing he’s ever done, stepping naked into a bathtub full of water –even though he always saves water by showering- with an equally naked Grantaire, both exposed and fully uncovered. They’ve known each other forever, he knows they have.

They sit on the cold floor of the tub, water reaching their mid-arms, pulling their knees near their bodies. They don’t speak, they don’t need to. Enjolras allows his eyes to linger on Grantaire. He feels silently permitted.

It’s true that the artist hasn’t bathed for days, maybe even weeks and Enjolras remembers with a pang in his chest that he was out there, homeless and alone. The water turns a darker shade. There is no more sarcasm in his eyes, only reserved shame and gentle solemnity. He is beautiful, the most beautiful thing Enjolras had ever seen and he never was one to appreciate beauty, at least mere, touchable, material beauty. Enjolras has never seen him naked, but he swears he’s thinner than before, although always more muscular than himself. Firm, curvy thighs, scattered with short, curly dark hair, feet pressed against the white wall of the tub. His chest is broad and strong, his abdomen flat with a line of dark hair leading south, and even though he managed to see more before, he can’t anymore because Grantaire has pulled his thighs very close to his body, and Enjolras is glad he can’t, because it would only feel vulgar to rest his eyes on anything apart from the colorful tattoo sleeves hugging gracefully all the length of his arms, saying a life story he yearns to study, from the old domino necklace, still hanging upon his peeking collarbones, from the wild, long dark curls that fall savagely on his shoulders, dissolving into curly facial hair that cover most of his cheeks and jawline. Grantaire is not conventionally beautiful, never considered to be, but he bears the most naked, wildest kind of beauty that captivates Enjolras’ every sense and he desperately needs to touch him.

They remain quiet as they proceed to washing themselves first, pouring coconut scented shower gel in their palms and scraping the fear and the war off their skin, then allowing the other to care for them. The wounds on their face and hands sting in contact with the pouring the water, but they soon get used to it because each other’s touch is the most breathtaking and peculiar sensation that pales everything else.

Grantaire finally parts his legs for Enjolras to shift and sit between his knees and washes his back, softly massaging the soft muscles, rubbing with his thumbs and releasing the tension from his body, eliciting small moans as Enjolras bends forward, shutting his eyes. He then proceeds in renewing the water in the tub, and pouring some over their heads and shoulders. They shut their eyes and allow it to drip down their noses and eyelashes, they taste it through parted lips and focus on its rhythmical sound. Grantaire washes his hair with the devotion of a loyal servant to a God, worshipping every damp, shiny lock in the way an artist does with his sculpture. Enjolras tilts his head back, exposing the graceful curve of his throat, and Grantaire leans forward to pepper his pale shoulders with small, soapy kisses. The blonde leans into the touch and breathes heavily, until Grantaire is finished.

“Let me wash your hair,” murmurs Enjolras, and Grantaire almost gapes in bewilderment.

“ _My_ hair? Why?” he asks, nevertheless readjusting his position and settling himself between Enjolras’ knees.

“Because it’s beautiful,” Enjolras whispers in his ear, resting his chin on the brunet’s shoulder for a moment, before running his fingers through the long, wet hair, shiny and smoothened by the water, plastered against the man’s nape and shoulders, almost reaching his shoulder blades. Enjolras pours shampoo in his palms and starts scraping Grantaire’s scalp attentively, before his touch grows softer and he massages with his fingertips, slowly and lovingly, before moving lower and taking the heavy bundle of wet locks in his hands. Grantaire is speechless all this time, until he lets a small whimper and his fingers wrap around Enjolras’ knee caps, before moving lower, stroking his almost hairless legs, resting on his thin ankles, just above his feminine feet. “Oh, Enjolras,” he sighs deeply. No pet names, no kids or self-absorbed Greek Gods, just his name, and Enjolras swears no other lips have ever made it sound so stunningly melodic.

They renew the water several times until it’s free of blood and dirt, and licks their hips and waists, clean and transparent. It has almost turned cold when they sit face to face, unbearably aroused and intrigued, and kiss lazily, their tongues sliding in each other’s mouth and taking the time to taste the most they can, learn the feeling of every single inch. The bathroom grows considerably dark, since they hadn’t turned the light on and it’s late afternoon of one of the cloudiest days, therefore no sun enters through the small window.

They help each other outside and in big, fluffy towels, their hair dripping on the piles of the bathroom. Enjolras had expected sudden modesty to take over him the moment they’d be out of the bathtub, but the feeling of _knowing_ Grantaire prevails upon everything else. They walk to the bedroom. Grantaire seems hesitant but Enjolras takes his hand again and leads him. He then finds a text by Combeferre in his phone.

**[From: Combeferre, 5:39 PM] I’m spending the night at Éponine’s, if you don’t need me. We found out she hit her head, nothing serious but I can’t let her have Gavroche on her mind all as well, all on her own.**

He quickly types a reply.

**[From: Enjolras, 5:40 PM] Don’t worry about me, I’m alright. Stay there, tell her to feel better.**

And then another, feeling his pounding heart on his throat.

**[From: Enjolras, 5:40 PM]  R will stay here.**

He falls back against the pillows, near Grantaire. The pillows are damp beneath their drying, already curling hair. They lie like that for a while, naked apart from the towels wrapped loosely around their hips. They turn their heads to face each other, and lie like that for what seems like forever, their chests rising and falling with their slow, synchronized breath, staring in their eyes as if that way they’ll be able to read what they need to know, what they’ve lost all the time they’d been waiting. It’s Grantaire who eventually breaks the silence.

“I can’t believe it,” he mutters, and it’s such a typical Grantaire thing to say, but somehow it doesn’t sound right. “I can’t believe that you let me be with you right now… like that." _That we’re staring at each other just like that, as if the world has stopped and we have nowhere to be and nothing to do, as if our sole purpose is to do… this._

“Don’t think that way,” Enjolras hears a foreign softness in his own voice. “Just believe in this. I need you to believe in this.”

“How is it possible?” Grantaire asks hoarsely. “Look at you! I… I’ll never be good enough for you. I’m an alcoholic, a _homeless_ fucking alcoholic…”

“There is space in my home with the both of us.”

“You don’t understand,” croaks Grantaire. “I’m a total mess…”

He is silenced by a kiss. It’s nothing but a faint brush of Enjolras’ full, red lips against his own, but it’s enough to drown his breath out of him. “I _need_ to be with you, not to make the headaches go away and the dizziness stop. I need it because it’s _you,_ ” breathes Enjolras against his lips, his palm coming to cup Grantaire’s unshaven cheek as they lie on their sides. “We need to be together. We always have, we just didn’t know it.”

“I always knew,” mutters Grantaire.

“I know. I’ve been a fool. Let me try. Let _us_ try.”

And Grantaire does.  

The pain does not go away, no. It’s just replaced by another kind of pain which is pure release at the same time, a pain full of need and greedy yearning for each other’s touch. They must have each other, _all_ of each other, everywhere and forever and most importantly, right now.  

Lazy, slow kisses grow harsh, fingers get tangled in damp curls and nails scrape in sensitive, needy skin. Enjolras can feel Grantaire nipping hungrily on his lower lip, tracing his tongue upon the rosy flesh and sucking the warmth and dampness. This is all too new for him and he can hardly hold back his strangled, small moans as his hands move past the man’s shoulders and stroke his tattooed arms. “Oh, Enjolras,” sighs Grantaire, and Enjolras thinks he’ll easily get used to the sudden appreciation for his actual name. Grantaire seems to know what he’s doing and he obviously is far more experienced that Enjolras himself, but the need to touch him, no matter whether he’ll do it right or wrong, prevails upon his patience. His fingers wrap around Grantaire’s wrists, pulling them away from his face and pinning them on the mattress. A grunt escapes the man’s parted lips and his lids slide shut when Enjolras presses his lips on the curve of his neck, before starting to nip and suck, digging his teeth in the flesh and feeling Grantaire’s body stiffening and shuddering with desire beneath his weight. Grantaire smells clean and fresh after their bath but Enjolras can already taste the thin layer of sweat, the intimacy and love they can only share without expecting anyone to understand, because _the things they’ve shared without ever understanding themselves…_ “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs against the clammy skin, and he means it. Grantaire is not beautiful for the world and the world is not beautiful for Grantaire, but Enjolras can see in those blue eyes what no one else can, they are so bright and radiant, almost burning right now, as if ice can burn. Not cold and pale anymore, not empty and hollow. The scars on his face say so many different stories, not only for Grantaire but for _them,_ he is human yet the gorgeous, long dark locks spread upon the pillow and tell a completely different tale. He can hear music in the man’s irregular breathing even though he never understood music when it sang to him and underneath the touch of those callused, talented hands, he doesn’t feel like a statue that has run away from its creator, he feels more human than ever, and closer to the artist than he could ever have been. It only feels right to be touched by Grantaire like that and to kiss every single thing on him, every hollow and every curve, his round, tattooed shoulders, his colorful arms that tense and grip around his head, not letting him go, his firm chest and every single visible rib as he stretches his body underneath him, the prominent, inscribed hipbones and his flat abdomen with hair leading to his groin. “Beautiful,” he hears himself whispering again and again, “beautiful.”

Grantaire can only moan in response, because even these words render him speechless, words he cannot believe in yet loses his ability to breathe at their very sound. “I can’t believe it…” he breathes with difficulty, “I can’t believe this is happening, oh _Enjolras..._ So beautiful! You can’t be real…”

“I’m real,” he says against his skin. “Look at me, Grantaire,” his head is resting on the man’s abdomen, feeling it pulsating. Grantaire raises his blue, half shut eyes to meet Enjolras’. “I’m real. This is real.”

He climbs closer to Grantaire’s face in order to press a hasty kiss on his lips. Their bodies are pressed together and their frantic heartbeats are joined in a shared rhythm. The dark haired man throws his legs around his waist and the friction their shafts create against each other sends spasms of desire all through Enjolras’ body.

It’s Grantaire who makes the next step, completely startling Enjolras with wrapping a strong, raw hand around both of their erections, or at least as much as can fit in his palm. Enjolras lets a gasp, finding this uncomfortably unexpected, but soon realizes that his limbs are shaking and he can’t support his weight on his elbows anymore, his whole body feels limp for a second and then tenses with pleasure and thirst for more. The movements of Grantaire’s hand around them are as rhythmical and paced as they can be, Enjolras can feel the stretching, rubbing and throbbing of the hot skin of their cocks and he can’t take it anymore. It’s too much for him to continue, he feels way too helpless to take charge, so much that he rolls on his back, his head thrown back, and his heart pounding in his chest, and begs. “Touch me.”

Grantaire is more than eager to oblige. His lips are the first that touch Enjolras, the pale, shining flesh of his throat, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, lips pressed against his pulse point, tongue tracing across the smooth curve, then his hands, fisting in Enjolras’ golden locks and eliciting a moan, moving to the alabaster chest and slim waist, finding a sensitive spot and causing him to gasp. “Fuck, R… _I need you…”_

Grantaire simply smiles before lowering his head and throwing a teasing, blue glance upwards before he spreads his legs and traces his tongue across the man’s balls. Enjolras squirms, throwing his hands lower to tangle his fingers in Grantaire’s long locks, while the brunet takes his whole length in his mouth, sucking softly at first, tasting the precum and gifting himself with the glorious sounds of sweet desperation that escape Enjolras’ parted lips, the whimpers and the loud moans, as he continues to move his wet tongue across the curve Enjolras’ twitching erection, teasing the head and swallowing harshly, until Enjolras groans. “ _Fuck…_ stop. Just…”

Grantaire almost freezes, his lips still around Enjolras, feeling a flash spreading from his cheeks to his chest. “I’m sorry…” he murmurs. “I got a little overwhelmed.”

“No,” Enjolras manages to breath between his panting, “this was… fuck, it was excellent, but I can’t come yet…”

Grantaire’s heart almost stops. “Why? I don’t mind…”

“Fuck me, R,” hisses Enjolras, hungrily trying to fill his chest with air. “I want you to _fuck me._ ”

Grantaire’s expression becomes solemn as he nods, his heart racing beneath his ribs, his face and devoted touch that of a dedicated worshipper as his hands come to rest on his hips. “God, Enjolras… Have you done this before?”

Enjolras leaves a small whimper that Grantaire cannot exactly take as affirmation. “Only on my own.” The heat and arousal those words send directly to Grantaire’s erection is unbearable, images of a disheveled golden god, spread upon a bed, his hands slipped between his thighs, opening himself up. “Are you feeling alright? I mean, you were hurt at the protest…”

“I’m fine, Grantaire. I promise. Just… give this to me.”

“Are you sure you want to…” the man mutters hesitantly.

“Yes,” he almost growls. “I want _you,_ I want you in every way I can have you. Please!” He pleads yet his voice is more of a command and he spreads his legs, granting Grantaire with the most glorious view of his perfect body. “Lube and condoms in the drawer. Hurry…”

Grantaire has no intention of disobeying, even when his hands are shaking as well as his knees while he stretches himself over the bed, reaching for the drawer. He coats his fingers with the cold liquid and touches Enjolras’ entrance before slowly sliding a finger inside him, causing him to cry with pleasure. Leaning forward to press their lips together he manages to silence him, something he immediately regrets until they start kissing again and he decides that he remembers why this is the most beautiful thing in the world, especially now, sloppy and wet and breathless. He curves and twitches his finger inside him, moving quickly, before thrusting a second finger, then a third, until Enjolras is a panting, trembling mess upon the sheets. “You,” he groans. “I want you. Do it _._ ”

He doesn’t know how it happens, how he rolls the fuckin’ condom on his length with such trembling fingers, how he manages to slide beneath his lover’s spread thighs but he’s doing it, he’s thrusting inside him and Enjolras is gasping, his features pulled in a grimace of need, fingers clutching on the sheets and legs wrapping tightly around Grantaire’s waist, pulling him deeper. “Are you alright?” asks Grantaire when the world gets less fuzzy for a minute, only do dissolve into a haze ridden by moans and frantic heartbeats again.

“Fuck, Grantaire!” is Enjolras’ only reply and fuck it’s _loud_ but Grantaire can’t complain, Grantaire feels needed, Grantaire feels full, Grantaire is in heaven.

He starts thrusting deeper, faster, picking up a pace and leaning closer, moving his hips quickly. Enjolras’ breathing is erratic, his eyes half shut and he is crying Grantaire’s name while the dark-haired man lets huffed, throaty sighs and grunts, pressing his lips against Enjolras’ again. It is savage, a dance, a struggle and a war, yet Grantaire is caring and gentle, he peppers Enjolras’ pale shoulders with kisses, his lips and warm breath brush against his smooth cheeks, his jaw and collarbones, worshipping and loving every single, sweaty inch of the man. Their hands clasp tightly against the sheets as Grantaire pushes deeper inside him and Enjolras’ back arches, his hips raising slightly, feeling like they fit together, like making love to each other, lingering and gentle and wild was what they had always been destined to do. It’s like they know it, like a rehearsed dream they repeat, like a mantra, a dance of which they have already performed the steps. Every curve moves after the other, in unison and harmony, musicalized by throaty cries and husky breaths and needy moans. They kiss and the blonde tangles his fingers in Grantaire’s loose, long hair, pulling harshly when he reaches his climax. It leaves him breathless, a trembling, incoherent, whimpering mess, and Grantaire releases soon after inside him and collapses on his back.

It’s him who manages to get up and bring a damp cloth to clean them because they can’t have another shower, not yet, they just need to touch each other and seek the comfort they were never granted with. It’s Grantaire who needs to be held and curls in Enjolras’ arms, resting his head on his chest and drowning in the soothing beat of his heart, completely synchronized with his own.

“Thank you,” murmurs Enjolras softly in his curls and Grantaire realizes that nothing has sounded more surreal the whole evening, and many surreal things have fuckin’ happened, but nothing has sounded more wrong than such words coming from the glorious lips of a god that gifted him with his whole being.

“Don’t thank me. It’s wrong,” he mutters.

Enjolras lowers his head and he raises his so that their foreheads meet and rest together. “Don’t speak such. We are one. We should always have been, we just happened to be fuckin’ idiots all along.”

They kiss again, lazily, lingeringly and softly this time. Enjolras can feel Grantaire smiling against his lips. “I love you,” he breathes before Enjolras can see it coming, and he feels himself freezing. “No, please don’t. I have since the moment I saw you and even before that. I’d find it ridiculous to keep these ridiculous little words inside me with no obvious reason and fooling both of us. Don’t say it back, I don’t want you to say it back. You have all the time you need, a fuckin’ eternity or so. You can never say it. Just…” he takes Enjolras’ hand in his own and presses the two of them against the man’s chest, above his pounding heart. “I know I’m fucked up, I know you have every right to fear, just tell me you want me to stay,” he says and he doesn’t need to say more. Everything is a distant, horrible nightmare in their minds, the endless, painful agony of being parted.

Enjolras smiles against Grantaire’s lips before kissing him again, ever so lovingly, and they both know he does not even need to say it back, not now. “I’ve turned the world to find you,” he whispers. “I need you to stay, forever. Don’t ever leave me again.”

And no matter how hard it seems, they both know they won’t.

*

Enjolras wakes up with the first stray sunrays filtered through the transparent curtains. His legs are tangled with the white sheets and his body feels sore but strangely enough, that doesn’t seem necessarily bad to him. His palm searches on the other side of his bed. It’s empty but still warm. It takes a while for him to realize what has changed, to realize that he’s not aching anymore, that the sun is shining outside the window and everything is going to be alright.

The events of the previous night are still blurry in his head but he is overtaken by a sudden modesty nevertheless and throws on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants before walking to the kitchen, stifling a yawn and rubbing his eyes.

He is at loss at first, when he sees Grantaire in his boxers and a ratty t-shirt that he obviously stole from his own closet, his tattooed arms popping with color between the olive green and grey fabrics. He is barefoot and humming some classic rock and roll tune Enjolras doesn’t really recognize, his wild curls tied to a messy bun on the top of his head. He looks careless and free, more than Enjolras has ever seen him before.

He peers behind him and throws his arms around his waist, burying his face in the crook of his neck. Grantaire lets a sleepy chuckle before tilting his head back, resting it upon Enjolras’ shoulder. “Hey kid,” he mutters, turning around a little to ruffle Enjolras’ hair.

“Hey,” murmurs Enjolras with some annoyance though quickly dissolved into affection _._ “Is the horrid pet name back?”

Grantaire tuts with his tongue. “Don’t put the grumpy face on because I was kind enough to make you coffee.”

The coffee smells deliciously but Grantaire even more. “Coffee,” he sighs. “How did you know how I take mine?”

Grantaire shrugs his shoulders and Enjolras comes to the realization that his t-shirt is particularly tight on Grantaire’s torso. “Oh, you know. I’m a wizard. And a fortune teller. And a damn,” he winks, “time traveler.”

“I think I might even have started taking a _like_ on you,” Enjolras raises an eyebrow sarcastically.

“Oh really, I’m immensely honored _mon ange_!”

“Weren’t we done with the nicknames? I thought we were done,” he groans, even though he’ll never admit that being called an angel, whatever ridiculous cohesion it might have with the hierarchy of heaven does not necessarily sound ridiculous. “Did you wash your teeth, you disgusting creature?” he murmurs teasingly.

“I sure as hell did,” Grantaire assures him, raising an eyebrow as he watches him take a sip of his coffee and sighing blissfully.

Enjolras then lets the cup on the counter and cups Grantaire’s nape, pulling him closer into a kiss. “Fuck,” he growls against his lips, “you brushed your teeth and then drank fuckin’ _orange juice_? How dare you?”

Grantaire cackles. “There are things you’ll have to get used to, Enj. Living with an artist such as me is a privilege.”

“Speaking of art, you are on duty.”

“Pamphlets? Posters? Flags? Saving the world?”

“Drawing me.”

“Oh but I have already done so, Apollo,” smirks Grantaire.

“Caricatures in Montmartre don’t count.” He can never let him know about invading in his privacy, peering in Jehan’s apartment without his consent.

“If you promise to be wearing only the absolutely necessary…”

The kiss is inevitable, orange juice or not.

*

Paris is magical when the dawn breaks.

It’s when the whole city is sleeping peacefully and the sky gets painted with waves of yellow and pink and orange, indicating the beginning of a new day that makes them feel alone in the world, yet it’s beautiful and calm and reassuring because they are together and they’re never breaking apart.

They’re sitting on the rooftop of the Musain, kissing chastely and slowly, as if the mellow flames in the sky are not a thing half as magical as the warm friction of their lips pressed together. There is silence all around, only the eerie music of the birds singing and the rare traffic, the meowing of a black cat climbed on a rooftop, the morning that creeps up directed by the sun facing straight at them.

“Are you sleepy?” whispers Grantaire tenderly against his lover’s lips, his fingers carded through his hair.

“A little, yes. But it’s a nice kind of sleepy.” They both know the kind he’s talking about. Peaceful. Silent. Full.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you won’t fall off.”

“That’s reassuring, my brave knight.”

Grantaire chuckles softly. “It’s nice to be alone at last.”

Enjolras agrees, breaking the kiss and resting his head on Grantaire’s shoulder. The dark-haired man throws an arm around his shoulder and pulls him closer. The days are getting warmer and warmer in Paris, but in dawn the chill is always piercing, and Enjolras’ striped red sweater hardly keeps it away.

It’s only when the sun has started peeking up behind the Eiffel tower that they hear Courfeyrac and Bossuet’s unmistakable laughter disturbing the morning peace. They can sense the vibrations of feet on the steps of the swirling staircase, and soon Courfeyrac appears with an enthusiastic smile, Jehan holding his hand in a huge, purple sweater and Bossuet with his arm around Musichetta climbing behind them. Apparently Joly has a fear of heights and Musichetta has to carefully go back a few steps to help him up and only after the three of them settle down near them Joly calms down and cracks a happy grin, ready to enjoy the sunrise. Jehan, always silent and melancholic, has a whimsical vibe on his faint smile, and he curls in Courfeyrac’s embrace with his feet on Grantaire’s lap, looking relaxed, as if climbing on high rooftops is the most casual thing he does, easier than walking from one room to another. Courfeyrac is already wolf-whistling at Enjolras and Grantaire –the latter of whom gives him a rude gesture together with a sarcastic smile- and Bahorel with Feuilly who appear later, sharing a cigarette, soon join the teasing.

Grantaire had expected Enjolras to be a little ashamed at first, not necessarily because of him because the man had not let him, not for one second to degrade himself in his presence, but because a _relationship,_ if that was what they should call it, was a thing completely new for the man. However, no matter how their friends teased, cooed or betted, Enjolras always stayed indifferent, open and straightforward, kissing Grantaire straight on the lips the very first time they all met, causing a total mayhem of cheers around them and publicly holding his hand in every meeting or movie night at Courfeyrac’s that followed. He was looking contented in a way Grantaire couldn’t quite understand, because Enjolras was perfect, flawless, extraordinary and most of the time he felt like a huge disaster, even proud as he threw his arm around when they walked and casually pulled him to affectionate kisses, and Grantaire decided that he didn’t feel like doubting anymore.

When Cosette and Marius appear, followed by Combeferre and Éponine –who totally has a hand resting on his ass- an already exasperated Enjolras hisses “Actually we came up here to be _alone_.”

Bahorel chuckles. “We don’t mind watching do we?”

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “Not at all, my darlings! We can always join if you want to spice up things a bit!”

“This isn’t private territory, is it?” Musichetta smirks, noting the irony on her sentence.

“We all deserve a place in the sun,” Bossuet throws his head back dramatically and Joly instinctively throws an arm around him to support him. “You’ll fall off, idiot, be careful!”

A rather thorough make out session shared between the three of them starts taking place and Enjolras can only be thankful for Combeferre in his elbow patched cardigan, who comes to sit on his side. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Combeferre smiles contentedly at the sight of Paris spreading beneath their feet. “God, I love this city.”

“Of course you do,” mutters Enjolras absent-mindedly, feeling the warmth of a smile sneaking behind his lips.

They gaze at the rooftops, the chimneys and window shutters, the curtains and metallic rails in the balconies. They can see the Eiffel Tower touching the warm colors of the sky and Enjolras heaves a sigh. “Isn’t it unfair?” he mutters eventually, as everyone has started chattering with the person sitting near them. “All I need is to believe in equality, yet so few people in comparison with the world’s population are born or have a chance to live their life in Paris. This is unfair. Why not them? Why us? Why did we have to be so lucky?”

Combeferre whistles quietly. “Look at your poetic side that sun rise makes shine!” Enjolras nudges him playfully on the rib. “There are so many beautiful places in the world, Enjolras, every one of them in a completely different way. Many people are lucky enough to live in them. Every place has its extraordinary beauty.”

“I know,” murmurs Enjolras eventually before turning his head to take a glimpse of Grantaire, his ponytail moving animatedly as he chats with Jehan and Courfeyrac. For a moment it’s like Grantaire can sense his eyes on his back, because he turns to face him instantly and flashes a smile through his bright blue eyes, tangling his fingers around his own before casually returning to the conversation. Enjolras hates to admit it, it sounds stupid and elitistic and completely different from his beliefs, but for now, it’s the only thing that makes sense. “I just wouldn’t picture us anywhere else.”

Combeferre smiles meaningfully behind his glasses, nodding slowly at Éponine’s direction. “Paris is a very old city,” he says softly, his eyes returning to Enjolras and his warm hand coming to meet with his own, “but we have always been young.”

Enjolras squeezes his best friend’s hand and presses his side closer to Grantaire’s warm body. Always, Combeferre said. Their whole life, their every dream, and whatever was before them. Now and the future, because the future is now, every second that ticks on their clock, no matter what is about to happen on the next one, they’re still here, he can hear his friends’ laughter, he can feel Combeferre’s gentle grip on his hand, he can breathe the same warm air through Grantaire’s lips, and look into his blue eyes. Again and again, every second that passes they’re here, staring at each other, the same group of young people, the same ideals, fighting and loving and laughing and breathing.

The sun rises behind the rooftops and the Eiffel tower, in the pink sky and the city starts waking beneath them. The day is young and will soon grow old, but will be reborn again.

Always.

 

 

[So we wrapped our arms around each other,  
Trying to shove ourselves back together.  
We were making love,  
Making love.  
It was a cold dark evening,  
Such a long time ago,  
When by the mighty hand of Jove,  
It was the sad story  
How we became  
Lonely two-legged creatures,  
It's the story of  
The origin of love.]

_The origin of love, Hedwig and the angry inch_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that the Hemingway quote "Paris was a very old city but we were young" has been beautifully used again and again in the fandom (and is the title of one of my favorite fanfictions of all time, you should definitely read it if you haven't already!) but my obsession with Paris is quite obvious and it had inspired me ever since I first read 'The Moveable Feast'. Then I saw
> 
>  
> 
> [this wonderful piece of art](http://24.media.tumblr.com/4774171943b4a38543a1bd6b4dc71942/tumblr_mtjprzv1ix1qg71r9o1_1280.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> (maybe my favorite artwork in the whole fandom) and I saw that lovely
> 
>  
> 
> <http://littlewadoo.tumblr.com/>
> 
>  
> 
> had used the quote for it too, so the ending of this chapter is obviously inspired by this masterpiece. (She's also selling wonderful pieces with her fanart so you should probably check her shop if you haven't already!) So yes, I'm sorry for including it once again but I never was able to resist some good old Ernest.


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